Earlier this week, the US Trade Representative (USTR) announced findings from a series of Section 301 tariff investigations concerning imports allegedly made with forced labor.

Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 authorizes USTR to investigate foreign trade practices and impose trade restrictions in response to conduct it deems unjustifiable or discriminatory. In this case, the focus is forced labor in global supply chains.

The question is not whether forced labor is a serious problem. The issue is if tariffs will address the problem, and if this is an abuse of Section 301.

USTR’s findings target 60 countries, including many allies and developed countries that do not use forced labor. If these countries aren’t considered compliant, what would a compliant country actually look like?

Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the European Union all maintain extensive labor regulations and customs enforcement capabilities. The EU bans imports of goods produced with forced labor in its Forced Labor Regulation. If such measures are insufficient, it becomes next to impossible to identify a realistic standard of adequacy.

At that point, the framework no longer distinguishes between strong and weak performers. Countries that have strengthened enforcement measures are treated no differently from those that have not. A rationale broad enough to encompass nearly every country ceases to function as a useful limiting principle.

The breadth of USTR’s Section 301 action extends to the nature of the remedy itself. The proposed tariffs go beyond narrowly defined categories of goods linked to forced labor risks.

This marks a shift from earlier uses of Section 301, including the China tariffs imposed during the first Trump administration. While debated in terms of effectiveness and design, at least the Section 301 China tariffs maintained a more direct connection between the underlying trade concerns and the imports they targeted.

The current proposal’s connection is weaker. USTR proposes economy-wide tariff rates of 10 percent or 12.5 percent, depending on enforcement conditions, applied across all imports from covered countries. Goods most plausibly associated with forced labor risks, such as electronics, agriculture, and textiles, would be treated no differently than other imports.

The use of Section 301 to justify broad tariffs reflects a wider trend in US trade policy. Across multiple statutory authorities, tariff tools originally intended for limited purposes have been expanded into broader instruments of policy.

CEI has been part of coalition efforts cautioning that Section 232 national security tariffs often extend far beyond legitimate defense-related concerns. National security rationales can be interpreted in ways that justify broad trade restrictions not connected to defense policy.

CEI General Counsel Ondray T. Harris details how emergency economic statutes such as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act are not intended to operate as open-ended delegations of authority. Treating them as flexible grants of power risks separating trade and taxation decisions from the constitutional constraints that ordinarily govern them.

As CEI Senior Economist Ryan Young has explained, even temporary balance-of-payments authority under Section 122 has been treated as part of a broader tariff policy toolkit, despite its limited design.

Together, these examples illustrate a recurring pattern of mission creep across US tariff authorities. The limiting principles that once constrained them are increasingly difficult to identify in practice.

At its core, the issue is the concentration of tariff authority in the executive branch. As Young explains in his recent study on tariffs, tariffs fall under Congress’s constitutional power of the purse. He argues that Congress should reclaim this authority by repealing statutory provisions that delegate taxing power to the executive branch.

If Congress does not reclaim its authority, the executive branch will continue using expansive statutory interpretations as a carte blanche to impose tariffs. The result is a system in which tariffs can be imposed without legislative accountability. Congress can reclaim that authority or watch it slip further from its grasp, redefining the separation of powers in ways the Founders would not recognize.

Source: CEI

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