Trump launches third round of contested tariffs using forced-labor justification

In July, President Donald Trump announced a third wave of broad tariffs, this time invoking Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to target countries he said do not enforce bans on goods produced with forced labor. The list includes 86 economies that together account for nearly all U.S. imports. The Liberty Justice Center and law firm Akin Gump, which had contested his earlier tariff attempts, filed urgent requests with the U.S. Court of International Trade to block the new duties, contending that the administration has not demonstrated how the cited countries fall short or how the tariffs would remedy any problem.

They further argued that the forced-labor rationale is a pretext for reinstating an invalidated global tariff system and that Trump's interpretation would breach the major-questions doctrine, which requires clear congressional authorization for actions of vast economic significance. The court had previously stayed a ruling that his Section 122 tariffs were illegal, and those tariffs expired on July 24. This latest move continues Trump's pattern of seeking statutory justifications that courts have repeatedly rejected.