The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has announced plans for a new set of sweeping Section 301 tariffs against 60 separate economies.
The USTR said it will impose duties on 59 different countries and the entire European Union for what it calls a failure to enforce prohibitions on the importation of goods produced with forced labor. In its publication to the Federal Register, the USTR said it will propose a tariff rate of between 10 and 12.5 percent depending on the commitments the countries or blocs have made to opposing forced labor.
“For economies that impose a forced labor import prohibition; have taken on commitments related to forced labor import prohibitions through an agreement on reciprocal Trade; or have imposed a partial regime with the effect of preventing the importation of certain forced labor goods, the Trade Representative proposes 10 percent as the rate of additional duties,” the USTR said. “For all other economies, the U.S. Trade Representative proposes 12.5 percent as the rate of additional duty.”
USTR said it launched 60 investigations on 12 March related to whether various economies were effectively prohibiting the importation of goods produced with forced labor and determined failures in all of those investigations.
USTR said 54 economies failed to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor: Algeria; Angola; Argentina; Australia; the Bahamas; Bahrain; Bangladesh; Brazil; Cambodia; Chile; China; Colombia; Costa Rica; Dominican Republic; Egypt; El Salvador; Guatemala; Guyana; Honduras; Hong Kong; India; Iraq; Israel; Japan; Jordan; Kazakhstan; Kuwait; Libya; Malaysia; Morocco; New Zealand; Nicaragua; Nigeria; Norway; Oman; Peru; the Philippines; Qatar; Russia; Saudi Arabia; Singapore; South Africa; South Korea; Sri Lanka; Switzerland; Taiwan; Thailand; Trinidad and Tobago; Türkiye; United Arab Emirates; United Kingdom; Uruguay; Venezuela; and Vietnam.
The remaining six economies have imposed prohibitions but have failed to effectively enforce them, according to the USTR: Canada; Ecuador; the European Union; Indonesia; Mexico; and Pakistan.
Overall, the tariffs affect most of the U.S.’s major seafood trading partners and would impact billions of dollars in seafood imports.
The new findings add to existing Section 301 tariffs the U.S. has already imposed on China. Those tariffs were part of a trade war between the U.S. and China that U.S. President Donald Trump started in his first term, and many of those tariffs were maintained during the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden. However, several seafood items were granted exceptions to those Section 301 tariffs, including haddock, sole, flounder, and multiple species of crab as a means of giving those companies time to shift sourcing – though those exclusions have continued to be extended nearly eight years later.
The new suite of Section 301 tariffs also has a long list of exceptions, but none of those are related to seafood, with many of them being related to aircraft parts. Some food items have been exempted from the tariffs, notably several beef items including high-quality beef cuts.
