The European Commission has described plans by the Trump administration to cite concerns about forced labour to levy a fresh 10 per cent tariff on future trade coming from European countries as “unjustified”.
The US is proposing a new tariff of at least 10 per cent on imports from 60 trading partners in president Donald Trump’s biggest move to rebuild his protectionist wall since his earlier levies were struck down by the US supreme court.
Following an investigation into how trade partners handle goods allegedly produced by forced labour, a 10 per cent tariff rate would apply to imports from Canada, Mexico, the European Union, Taiwan and the UK, among other places, according to a statement from the Office of the US Trade Representative.
Products from other major economies, including China, India, Japan, South Korea, Brazil and Switzerland, would be subject to a 12.5 per cent levy.
Brussels officials inside the commission and European capitals are studying the grounds Washington is trying to rely on to underpin the new tariffs, which are effectively taxes on import goods.
The European Commission, which led the EU’s tariff negotiations with the White House, said its officials would “carefully analyse the preliminary findings of the investigation and will continue engaging with the US Administration”.
“That said, the EU considers tariffs imposed on these grounds to be unjustified,” a spokesman for the EU body said.
The union’s executive arm pointed to new regulations due to come into force at the end of next year, which ban products made with forced labour from the EU market.
The commission said it had been clear during the US trade investigation that it fully shared any concerns about forced labour and remained committed to “eradicating it from global supply chains through concrete actions,” the spokesman said.
An EU-US deal agreed last summer saw European countries agree to lock in a tariff rate of 15 per cent on goods sold across the Atlantic into the US, which ended months of uncertainty about whether Trump would drag Europe into a damaging trade war.
In the months since though Trump’s tariff agenda has suffered legal setbacks, forcing his administration to search for new grounds to justify levying import taxes on trade coming from abroad, which Trump claims will protect US industry.
Another route being pursued by US trade officials is to impose tariffs on imports on national security grounds.
Bernd Lange, a senior German MEP who chairs the European Parliament’s trade committee, said Washington was “desperately searching for new legal grounds to sustain its tariff policy”.
Lange, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SDP), said accusing the EU of not doing enough to combat forced labour was “absurd”.
“The EU has adopted the world’s most stringent rules against products made with forced labour. This looks very much like trying to make the facts fit a legal justification for tariffs that has already been decided,” he wrote in a post on X.
The findings of the US trade representative’s investigation concerning the EU runs to a mere 124 words in a 98-page report, stating the 27-state union had “failed to effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced or compulsory labour”.
It claimed a failure by the EU to enforce a ban on the import of goods made by forced labour – despite the fact legislation has been passed to introduce such a ban – put a “burden” on US commerce. The report claims tariffs would be a justified response to correct what it portrays as an unfair trading advantage.
Additional reporting – Bloomberg