The United States will enforce new import tariffs starting this Friday on goods from 60 trading partners including Japan, South Korea, and the European Union.
The policy is being implemented because trading partners are deemed not to have adequately banned imports of goods produced through forced labor. The announcement came on Thursday ahead of the expiration of the global 10 percent tariff that has been in place since February.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said President Trump recognizes that decades of moral persuasion have failed to eradicate forced labor from global supply chains. He added that the United States has enforced a ban on imports of forced-labor goods for nearly a century.
The new tariffs are based on a different legal authority from the previous ones, which could only last 150 days unless extended by Congress.
