At 12:01 in the morning on Friday, July 24, a temporary blanket tariff on American imports expired. At exactly the same minute, a new set of tariffs took its place. That timing is the most honest thing about the whole policy.
The administration imposed duties of 10 to 12.5 percent on imports from 60 US trading partners, accusing them of failing to impose and enforce bans on goods made with forced labour, CBS News reported. The covered goods represent about 99 percent of all US imports by value.
Labor Section: Who pays what
The default rate is 12.5 percent, applied to most partners including Vietnam and China. A lower 10 percent rate applies to 17 countries judged to already have some forced-labour prohibitions on the books: Argentina, Bangladesh, Britain, Cambodia, Canada, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Trinidad and Tobago.
The European Union, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Switzerland were all assigned rates somewhere in that 10 to 12.5 percent band. India was moved down from 12.5 to 10 percent after tightening its forced-labour enforcement, while Brazil and Chile were both placed at the full 12.5 percent, Fortune reported.
There are real carve-outs. Oil and gas, fertiliser, steel and other goods already under sector-specific tariffs are exempt, as are goods not produced domestically and most products qualifying for duty-free treatment under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
The legal machinery
The authority claimed here is Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows duties against trade practices deemed unjustifiable, unreasonable or discriminatory following a formal investigation by the US Trade Representative.
That choice of statute is not accidental. These duties replace a temporary 10 percent global tariff imposed under Section 122, which Congress allowed to lapse on July 24 at 12:01 a.m. That stopgap had itself been put in place after the Supreme Court struck down the administration’s emergency-powers tariffs under IEEPA in February 2026, the Washington Times reported.
So this is the third legal vehicle for substantially the same policy in under a year. One was struck down by the Supreme Court, one was allowed to expire by Congress, and this is the replacement, arriving the same minute the previous one died.
The official case
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer put the argument in terms of consistency. The United States has had a forced labour import ban for nearly a century, he said, and rigorously enforces it. It is well past time for our trading partners to do the same.
A senior administration official framed it as continuity with existing bipartisan policy, saying the action advances longstanding bipartisan objectives by pairing enforcement with incentives. Forced labour is a real and enormous problem, affecting an estimated 27.6 million people globally by the figure cited in the coverage.
The objections, including from people who care about forced labour
The most damaging criticism is not that forced labour does not matter. It is that the policy does not track it. Critics noted that the action covers 99 percent of US imports by value while naming fewer than half the countries flagged on the Labor Department’s own list of goods produced with forced labour. The Washington Times reported that description bluntly as a flimsy pretext.
Representative Richard Neal of Massachusetts called the justification too convenient to be taken seriously, per the Associated Press.
Alan Wolff of the Peterson Institute for International Economics went to the legal question. These new tariffs would represent another case of presidential overreach, he said. If they were challenged in court, the Supreme Court would likely overturn them, he told TIME. Given that the Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs in February, that is not an idle prediction.
How the world responded
Brazil called the move arbitrary and unjustified, said it would invoke its Reciprocity Law and pursue action at the World Trade Organization. Australia called the tariffs unjustified. New Zealand rejected the forced-labour accusation outright. Canada, characteristically, said it would engage constructively.
On the United Kingdom’s rate the sources genuinely conflict, with two placing Britain in the 10 percent tier and one grouping it at 12.5 percent, per Al Jazeera. We are going with 10 percent on the weight of sources rather than presenting either as settled.
Why This Matters
A tariff covering 99 percent of imports by value is not a targeted trade measure. It is a general consumption tax on imported goods, administered by the executive branch, and the human rights framing is what allows it to exist under a statute that requires a specific finding about specific trade practices.
That framing has a cost beyond economics. Forced labour in supply chains is a genuine problem with genuine victims, and using it as the legal wrapper for a blanket revenue measure makes the next real enforcement action easier to dismiss as pretextual. Neal’s line about it being too convenient is the risk in one sentence.
The pattern is the thing to watch. IEEPA tariffs struck down in February. Section 122 stopgap expired in July. Section 301 tariffs the same minute. Each vehicle is narrower and more legally contested than the last, and Wolff’s prediction is that this one ends the same way as the first.
The NewsSparq Takeaway
Three things to hold onto.
One, the scope is close to total. Sixty trading partners, 10 to 12.5 percent, roughly 99 percent of US imports by value, effective 12:01 a.m. on July 24, with exemptions for oil and gas, fertiliser, and most USMCA-qualifying goods.
Two, the timing exposes the intent. These duties took effect the same minute the expiring Section 122 tariff lapsed, which itself replaced tariffs the Supreme Court struck down in February.
Three, the legal ground is contested. Section 301 requires findings about specific practices, yet the action covers 99 percent of imports while naming fewer than half the countries on the Labor Department’s own forced-labour list.
A policy justified by the treatment of workers overseas arrived at the precise minute a different tariff expired. Whatever else that is, it is a schedule that was written backwards from the deadline.
Sources: Fortune, CBS News, TIME, GBH, Associated Press, Al Jazeera, Washington Times.
By Md Danish, Founder and Editor in Chief, NewsSparq
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