U.S. sets new tariffs at 10% to 12.5% on 60 trade partners

By Dana Whitfield · Reporting from Washington · July 26, 2026

The U.S. government has once again deployed the full weight of its institutional power—and its tariff schedule—to address a complex, politically charged issue:

The U.S. government has once again deployed the full weight of its institutional power—and its tariff schedule—to address a complex, politically charged issue: forced labor in global supply chains. Under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative imposed new duties ranging from 10% to 12.5% on imports from 60 major economies, covering nearly 99% of American goods. The stated justification is that these partners have failed to adequately enforce bans on goods produced using forced labor. This move replaces a temporary global 10% tariff that expired at midnight Friday morning, ensuring the continuity of the punitive financial mechanism. As Jamieson Greer, USTR, noted, "The United States has had a forced labour import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it; it’s well past time for our trading partners to do the same."

However, reading across reports from CNBC, Al Jazeera, and Euronews reveals a pattern far more familiar than human rights advocacy. The tariffs are highly selective: those countries that have committed to or already implemented strong labor prohibitions—like Canada, the EU, India, and the UK—receive the lower 10% rate, while others face the higher 12.5%. This isn't a uniform application of moral suasion; it is an arithmetic exercise in leverage. The Peterson Institute for International Economics even pointed out that this investigation appears less about labor standards and more about recreating tariff regimes struck down by the Supreme Court.

This entire spectacle—the use of comprehensive economic sanctions to punish nations for their political or commercial deviation from U.S. interests—is deeply predictable. It echoes, most starkly, the sustained U.S. embargo on Cuba, which has prevented trade with Cuban interests since 1960, remaining one of history’s most enduring and comprehensively punitive trade restrictions based solely on divergent ideology. Where the parallel breaks down: The current tariffs are applied across a vast network of commercial partners—from Australia to China—and utilize specific legal sections (Section 301) that allow for nuanced rate setting, suggesting an attempt at managed competition rather than total economic isolation.

The core takeaway is clear: Washington’s primary goal remains the re-establishment of its preeminence in global commerce, using human rights as a convenient and legally durable pretext. The sheer complexity—the tiered rates, the exemptions for energy, the specific carve-outs—betrays an underlying motive that is purely economic arithmetic, not moral conviction.

This tariff escalation does not signal a return to responsible, predictable global trade governance. Instead, it represents a reversion to the most blunt, least efficient tools of great power competition: punitive tariffs used as instruments of political coercion. It rewards compliance with geopolitical alignment and punishes those who simply fail to meet the latest arbitrary standard set by Washington.

U.S. sets new tariffs at 10% to 12.5% on 60 trade partners

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