The Trump administration has replaced its expiring blanket tariffs with a more layered and complex system — imposing graduated duties on 60 countries under the legal framework of forced-labor enforcement, with rates ranging from 10 to 12.5 percent depending on each nation’s compliance rating.
The new tariffs, announced Thursday by US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, take effect under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. They replace a temporary 10 percent global tariff that was set to expire, but the structure is far more detailed than the across-the-board approach it succeeds.
The system sorts the 60 targeted economies into three tiers.
The lowest rate — 10 percent — applies to 17 countries that the USTR determined have either imposed their own forced-labor import prohibition, committed to do so through a bilateral trade agreement, or adopted a partial regime. This group includes Canada, Mexico, India, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, among others.
A mid-tier rate of either 10 or 12.5 percent, applied selectively to certain products, covers the European Union, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Switzerland — major industrialized economies that account for a significant share of US imports.
The highest rate — 12.5 percent on all covered goods — applies to the remaining economies that have taken no meaningful action on forced-labor enforcement.
The administration frames the policy as a human rights measure. “President Trump recognizes that decades of moral suasion have not eradicated forced labor from global supply chains,” Greer said in a statement announcing the action.
But the effect is a broad restructuring of US trade policy. The USTR investigations that underpinned the tariffs included two rounds of public hearings, more than 2,100 public comments, and consultations with more than 45 governments. The administration insists the process was thorough, but the outcome is the same: higher costs on nearly everything the United States imports.
For American consumers, the impact will arrive over several months as importers pass costs through supply chains. Economists project the new tariffs will add roughly 0.3 to 0.5 percentage points to core inflation.
The trade architecture Trump is building differs from his first-term approach. Where the early tariffs were broad and punitive, the new system introduces a compliance-incentive structure: countries that align their labor enforcement with US standards get a lower rate. Those that do not pay more.
The White House is betting this graduated model will be more sustainable politically — harder to attack as arbitrary when each rate is tied to a specific enforcement assessment. But the countries paying the highest rates include China, Vietnam, Brazil, and much of Southeast Asia and Africa, meaning the harshest penalties fall on the nations the administration views as either trade rivals or insufficiently cooperative.
The 60 targeted economies account for roughly 99 percent of all US imports. The product exemptions are narrow: raw materials that cannot be sourced domestically, goods that would cause economy-wide disruptions if tariffed, and selected products of countries that have committed to enforcement improvements.
The cumulative weight of Trump’s trade barriers — the steel and aluminum tariffs, the China-specific duties, the Canada tariffs, and now this Section 301 regime — has no modern precedent in American economic policy.