A new Federal Register notice signals the next stage of Washington’s sweeping forced labor tariff program, as importers from 60 economies absorb duties of 10 to 12.5 percent and foreign governments press their objections
By the US Trade Desk, Peacock Tariff Consulting
WASHINGTON, September 13, 2026. The Office of the United States Trade Representative moved this week to extend the reach of the most unusual tariff program in modern American trade policy. In a Federal Register notice released Friday, September 12, the agency initiated further action under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 concerning the failure of trading partners to impose and effectively enforce prohibitions on the importation of goods produced with forced labor, building on a framework that since late July has applied additional duties to imports from 60 economies covering nearly all US trade.
The notice arrives at a moment of maximum consequence for the program. Tariffs of 10 percent or 12.5 percent have been collecting at US ports for seven weeks. Governments from Brussels to Tokyo have formally objected to the legal theory underpinning the duties. And importers across virtually every product category are still working out what the levies mean for landed costs already inflated by parallel tariff programs on metals, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and drones.
An unprecedented use of Section 301
The forced labor initiative is unlike any prior use of Section 301, the statute that authorizes the US Trade Representative to act against foreign practices deemed unreasonable or discriminatory and a burden on US commerce. Historically, Section 301 has targeted specific offending conduct by a single trading partner, most famously China’s technology transfer and intellectual property practices in 2018. The forced labor cases inverted that model: rather than accusing trading partners of committing abuses, the investigations faulted them for failing to police abuses committed elsewhere.
The program began on March 12, 2026, when Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced the initiation of 60 separate investigations into the acts, policies and practices of economies that, in the agency’s assessment, had failed to impose and effectively enforce a ban on importing goods made with forced labor. The 60 economies under investigation collectively accounted for more than 99 percent of US imports in 2024, according to a USTR fact sheet accompanying the announcement. The theory, as officials explained it, was that the United States bans forced labor goods at its own border under longstanding law, and that trading partners which decline to adopt equivalent bans effectively serve as transshipment and laundering channels that undercut both American values and American producers.
The investigations moved at remarkable speed. USTR and the interagency Section 301 Committee convened public hearings on April 28 and 29. On June 2, the Trade Representative formally determined that the practices of all 60 investigated economies were actionable, finding them unreasonable and a burden or restriction on US commerce. A report published the same day laid out the evidentiary basis, and a Federal Register notice on June 5 proposed remedies and opened a comment period. Additional hearings on the proposed actions followed on July 7, 8 and 9.
On July 23, at President Trump’s direction, Ambassador Greer took final action, and the tariffs took effect for goods entered on or after July 24. The structure is two-tiered by design. Economies that have committed to adopting and effectively enforcing forced labor import prohibitions face an additional duty of 10 percent. Economies that have made no such commitment face 12.5 percent. The differential, administration officials have said, is intended to function as an ongoing incentive: any government can move itself to the lower tier, or in principle out of the program entirely, by enacting and enforcing an import ban comparable to US law.
The legal foundation: a century of forced labor law
The program builds on an American legal tradition that long predates the current administration. Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 has prohibited the importation of goods made with forced labor for nearly a century, though for most of that history a consumptive demand loophole and scarce enforcement resources rendered it largely dormant. Congress closed the loophole in 2016, and enforcement accelerated sharply with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act of 2021, which created a presumption that goods from China’s Xinjiang region are made with forced labor and are therefore inadmissible.
The Section 301 program internationalizes that framework. Its premise is that unilateral border enforcement by the United States cannot succeed if forced labor goods excluded from American ports are simply rerouted through, or absorbed by, markets that impose no equivalent ban, while the tainted inputs continue to flow into globally integrated supply chains. By taxing the imports of governments that decline to act, Washington is attempting to make forced labor enforcement a condition of preferential access to the American market. A Congressional Research Service analysis published this spring described the legal theory as novel but noted that Section 301’s text gives the Trade Representative broad discretion to define unreasonable practices, discretion that courts have historically been reluctant to second-guess.
What the September 12 notice changes
Friday’s Federal Register notice, according to trade advisories circulating over the weekend, opens a further round of investigation and review within the forced labor framework, addressing economies and enforcement questions not resolved in the July action. Trade lawyers caution that the full operational details will matter enormously and that the document should be read closely once analyzed, but the direction of travel is unmistakable: the administration regards the July tariffs not as the conclusion of the forced labor program but as its foundation.
One known piece of unfinished business involves tariff rate quotas. In the July action documents, the Trade Representative informed the President that establishing certain tariff rate quota measures, which would allow specified volumes of goods to enter at lower duty rates before higher rates apply, was not feasible at the time but would become feasible by September 1, 2026. That date has now passed, and practitioners have been watching for implementing action ever since. The September 12 notice is widely expected to begin operationalizing those measures, alongside potential adjustments to country tier assignments as governments respond to the program’s incentives.
For importers, tier assignments are the highest-stakes variable. A move from the 12.5 percent tier to the 10 percent tier, or a country’s removal from the program after adopting a qualifying import ban, changes duty exposure across every product line from that origin. Conversely, a finding that a government’s commitments have gone unfulfilled could shift trade in the other direction.
Foreign governments push back
The program has drawn formal protest from an unusually broad coalition of trading partners. In submissions filed during the July comment period and analyzed by the International Economic Law and Policy Blog, foreign governments made their case against the tariffs on multiple grounds. Several argued that their existing labor laws and enforcement regimes already address forced labor, and that conditioning tariff relief on adopting an American-style import ban amounts to dictating the internal legislative choices of sovereign states. Others contended that the measures violate World Trade Organization commitments, since the duties apply above bound tariff rates without any WTO-sanctioned justification, and that the United States is using human rights language to dress up what is functionally a revenue and leverage instrument.
The European Union’s position has been especially closely watched, because the bloc adopted its own forced labor products regulation in 2024, with full application scheduled for late 2027. EU officials have argued that the regulation demonstrates precisely the commitment the US program demands, and that the bloc’s placement in the tariff program at all reflects an unreasonably narrow reading of what effective enforcement means. Developing economies have raised a different objection: that they lack the customs infrastructure to police forced labor in third-country supply chains, and that the tariffs punish capacity constraints rather than policy choices.
The administration has been unmoved by the WTO arguments, consistent with its position across other tariff programs, and officials have pointed to the two-tier structure as evidence that the program rewards cooperation rather than simply taxing it.
The stacking question and the compliance burden
For US importers, one of the most consequential technical features of the forced labor tariffs is how they interact with the rest of the current tariff landscape. Under the implementing guidance, the Section 232 national security tariffs on steel, aluminum, copper, lumber, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors do not stack on top of the forced labor duties; goods covered by those sectoral programs are carved out of the Section 301 forced labor tariffs to avoid double coverage. That carve-out spares some industrial importers, but the vast universe of consumer goods, apparel, electronics components, food products and machinery outside the sectoral programs bears the new duties in full.
The compliance dimension extends beyond tariff arithmetic. The program has intensified attention to supply chain tracing, because the underlying policy concern is also enforced directly through CBP’s authority to detain individual shipments under Section 307 and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Companies now face a layered regime: shipment-level detention risk if their own supply chains touch forced labor, and country-level tariff exposure based on their suppliers’ governments’ enforcement postures. Trade advisers report a surge in demand for supply chain mapping, origin verification and documentation services since March.
Stakeholder reactions and economic effects
Domestic reaction has divided along predictable but revealing lines. Labor advocates and human rights organizations have broadly welcomed the program as the most consequential forced labor enforcement action any government has taken, arguing that only market access pressure of this magnitude can change sourcing behavior at scale. Domestic manufacturers in import-sensitive sectors have supported the duties for related reasons, viewing them as partial compensation for competing against supply chains that tolerate coerced labor.
Importing industries see it differently. Retail and apparel trade associations have warned that a tariff applied to essentially all merchandise trade operates as a broad consumption tax, landing hardest on lower-income households that spend the largest share of income on imported goods. Their central complaint is precision: a country-wide duty raises costs on compliant and non-compliant producers alike, penalizing companies that have invested heavily in clean supply chains at the same rate as those that have not.
Economists differ on the program’s likely effects. Supporters argue that pricing forced labor risk into imports corrects a distortion that has long disadvantaged American manufacturers and ethical producers worldwide, and that the differential tariff has already prompted several governments to introduce import ban legislation. Skeptics counter that the revenue effects, estimated by private analysts in the tens of billions of dollars annually given the program’s near-universal coverage, suggest fiscal motives alongside the stated human rights rationale. Because the duties took effect only in late July, hard data on price pass-through remains preliminary, though early customs statistics show importers front-loading shipments ahead of the effective date and a measurable dip in entries from the 12.5 percent tier in August.
Implications for importers and exporters
The practical to-do list for US businesses is growing. First, importers should confirm the current tier assignment for every country of origin in their sourcing base and monitor the September 12 notice and subsequent Federal Register documents for changes, because tier movements take effect on entry dates, not order dates. Second, companies with flexibility in sourcing should model the duty differential between 10 percent and 12.5 percent origins alongside all other applicable tariffs; in some categories the forced labor duty is now the deciding factor between competing suppliers. Third, importers eligible for the anticipated tariff rate quotas should prepare to act quickly, because quota volumes are typically allocated on a first-come basis and the trade community expects strong demand. Fourth, compliance teams should treat country-level tariff exposure and shipment-level detention risk as a single integrated problem, building supply chain documentation that serves both.
Exporters and foreign producers face their own calculus. Governments weighing whether to adopt import bans are effectively negotiating with the tariff schedule, and industries in the 12.5 percent tier have become vocal domestic constituencies for legislative action in their home capitals. In that sense, the program is functioning as its architects intended: exporting US forced labor policy through the pressure of market access.
Whether that model survives legal and diplomatic challenge is the open question of the fall. WTO dispute consultations have been requested by multiple members, though the paralysis of the organization’s Appellate Body limits the practical consequences. Domestic litigation is considered less likely to succeed than the IEEPA challenges that felled the emergency tariffs in February, because Section 301 contains explicit tariff authority and prescribed procedures that the agency, whatever else critics say, has followed step by step.
For now, the duties are collecting, the program is expanding, and the September 12 notice confirms that forced labor enforcement has become a permanent architecture of US trade policy rather than a one-time action. Importers who treated the July tariffs as a temporary irritant are being advised, in the words of one Washington trade lawyer, to build them into the budget and watch the Federal Register like a hawk.