The new Section 301 tariffs for forced labor are vastly excessive

The 10 to 12.5 percent tariffs the Trump administration has imposed under its interpretation of the forced-labor provision of Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 are at least 40 to 50 times the magnitude that could be warranted on the basis of US exports lost and US imports increased as a consequence of trade in goods produced using forced labor. Forced labor accounts for an estimated 5.5 million workers in tradable-goods sectors, compared with nearly 2 billion workers in those sectors worldwide. Cline argues that the forced-labor provision, therefore, does not provide a credible economic basis for replacing the "reciprocal" tariffs that the Supreme Court ruled illegal.

Note: The estimates for the warranted forced-labor tariff against advanced economies (rest of the OECD, or ROECD, countries) in this Policy Brief were revised in September 2026 to take account of intra-trade among ROECD countries, reducing the estimated magnitude of ROECD imports from non-OECD countries. The relevant base in calculating the warranted tariff was also shifted from US exports to ROECD countries to US imports from them.