Trump administration announces new tariffs on 85 countries, claiming failed ‘forced labor’ enforcement

As soon as the Trump administration announced its new tariffs on 85 countries, for supposedly failing to crack down on forced labor, the office of the US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, turned its official, government social media account into a political battering ram: posting past statements against forced labor from 15 senators and members of Congress of both parties, in a transparent attempt to head off their criticism of the new tariffs.

One of those lawmakers, congresswoman Linda Sánchez, a California Democrat, denounced the pretext for the new tariffs as a sham anyway.

“President Trump isn’t serious about combating forced labor. He’s trying to make an end-run around the Supreme Court and Congress to reimpose his illegal tariffs,” Sánchez wrote on social media.

double quotation markIf he was serious, he would not be applying the same tariff rate to China, one of the worst forced labor abusers in the world, as he does to countries like Australia. Then again, unlike China, Australia, doesn’t manufacture any Trump corporation products.

This is the same administration that gutted funding to combat forced labor through cuts to the Bureau of International Labor Affairs and rolled back worker protections here at home, while encouraging companies to profit off some of the world’s worst forced labor abusers through his proposed US-China Board of Trade.

We need to take forced labor seriously. But that includes addressing our problems here at home, including by taking on the export of goods made with American prison labor. Slapping more tariffs on every country that upsets the president isn’t the way to do it.