Can Tariffs Actually Reduce Forced Labor?
July 27, 2026
New tariffs that took effect Friday penalize more than 60 countries for failing to ban or adequately enforce bans on forced-labor imports. But there’s little consensus on whether they’ll actually curb it, and there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical.
These new tariffs seem driven more by trade disputes than concerns about forced labor. The US government has provided no benchmarks against which countries’ performance on passing and enforcing import bans will be assessed to yield lower tariffs as progress is made. And the efficacy of new import bans, especially with a weakened civil society less able to identify targets for enforcement, is certainly unclear. Still, the 10% to 12.5% duties will likely help incentivize companies to map and manage their supply chains more fully, and more import bans could make each one more effective. Legal challenges are inevitable, but the larger question of whether these tariffs further global efforts to eradicate forced labor remains to be seen.
The new tariffs come after several months of public investigation into countries’ efforts to fight forced labor and to establish and enforce import bans. But they also coincide with the expiration of President Trump’s temporary 10% worldwide tariff, which he imposed after the Supreme Court struck down tariffs he had issued under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The tariffs are clearly motivated in part by that ruling, as President Trump and United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer have framed the forced labor investigation, from its initiation, as an alternate path to moving the President’s agenda forward, and continue to do so.
Still, the fight to ban imports made with forced labor has been a bipartisan trade and law enforcement priority for many years. The US import ban has been on the books since 1930, but a significant loophole made enforcement rare. The Obama Administration closed that gap and began enforcing the ban more seriously. The first Trump Administration expanded use of the ban, detaining an unprecedented number of goods at the border that the government had reason to suspect were made with forced labor. It also passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which established that goods made in North Korea were presumptively made with forced labor, and therefore prohibited from entry into the US, unless importers could prove otherwise.
The Biden Administration signed the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which required all three countries to impose a ban on imports made with forced labor, and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA). Co-sponsored by Representative Jim McGovern and then-Senator, now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the UFLPA established that goods made wholly or in part in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China are prohibited from entering the US unless importers can demonstrate forced labor was not involved.
Experts and advocacy groups engaged in the fight against forced labor have prioritized forced labor import bans for years, in part because they shift the cost-benefit analysis of knowingly or unknowingly relying on forced labor to make things. Losing US market access is a significant incentive for companies to proactively address forced labor, take steps to minimize forced labor risk in their supply chains, and provide more meaningful remedy when violations are identified. This shift in business behavior is arguably the ban’s most powerful mechanism to address forced labor.
And in theory, import bans get more effective as there are more of them. That is because more import bans help prevent trans-shipment issues, for example where goods made with forced labor in Xinjiang get passed through neighboring countries to “launder” the shipment before it is sent to the US. More import bans can also help prevent the development of bifurcated supply chains, where it makes financial sense for companies to have two supply chains, one that does not include forced labor and makes more expensive goods for stricter markets, including the US, and another that includes forced labor goods to be sold elsewhere. The more countries that have and enforce forced-labor import bans, the harder it gets to find a destination country willing to launder the shipment, and the less economically justifiable bifurcated supply chains become. So far, these tariffs and the underlying investigation has driven an increase in the number of forced labor import bans around the world from three to 13, and more are expected.
Despite these benefits, critics have good reason to wonder if the newly proliferated import bans and those which will presumably follow these tariffs will have the desired effect of decreasing global rates of forced labor.
First, effectively enforcing these import bans requires extensive research and investigation, much of which is undertaken by civil society organizations. This is especially true in countries where government investigation and enforcement capacity is weak, but it is also true here in the US. As the Trump Administration has taken steps to hollow out and intimidate civil society in the US and around the world, it is not clear how countries will enforce import bans unless they are going to simply duplicate the US government’s enforcement decisions. Of course, with tariffs as an incentive, this approach becomes even more convenient.
Second, the tariffs fail to address forced labor happening domestically in many of the 60 countries or consider other domestic efforts to address forced labor. Iraq and Libya, for example, have some of the highest rates of forced labor according to Walk Free’s Global Slavery Index, but the US government has imposed a 12.5% tariff for failing to police imports, rather than incentivizing those countries to address the goods made with forced labor within their countries, which then enter global supply chains. It could be more effective for the US government to investigate the extent to which countries with high rates of domestic forced labor have enshrined and are enforcing laws prohibiting it, and tie tariffs to that effort, rather than imports.
Four metrics will determine whether these tariffs succeed: whether they reduce global rates of forced labor; whether they shrink the pool of forced-labor goods available to consumers in countries with import bans; whether they level the playing field for companies that do not use forced labor; and whether they push companies to manage supply chains more proactively, for forced labor and, ideally, for other human rights risks too. With the tariffs taking effect only yesterday, much remains to be seen.
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