US President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday began its second tariff investigation in as many days, continuing its effort to rebuild Trump’s trade policy that was struck down by the US Supreme Court.
The office of US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer initiated the probe under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act into forced-labor practices in 60 economies.
Taiwan, Canada, China, the EU, India, Japan, Mexico, South Korea and the UK are among the targets of the inquiry.
Photo: Bloomberg
“The investigations will determine whether acts, policies and practices of each of these economies related to the failure to impose and effectively enforce a ban on the importation of goods produced with forced labor are unreasonable or discriminatory and burden or restrict US commerce,” Greer said in a statement.
The move follows another sweeping inquiry announced on Wednesday focused on industrial overcapacity in more than a dozen US trading partners, including major economies such as China, the EU, India and Japan.
The Trump administration has rushed to construct a new tariff regime after the court ruled that the president violated the US Constitution by imposing many of his previous duties using an emergency law.
Trump’s replacement levies, which fall under Section 122 of the Trade Act, expire in July.
Greer has said that his goal is to complete a series of trade investigations by then to allow the president to quickly enact new tariffs after the outgoing measures expire.
Trump has said that his goal is to simply replace the tariffs that the court struck down.
Section 301 tariffs are more durable and legally tested than other authorities Trump has leaned toward, but are more time-consuming.
“We had a little disappointing decision to put it mildly from the Supreme Court,” the president told US representatives during a speech on Monday. “The good news is I have lots of other ways of doing the same thing. I just have to work a little harder.”
The industrial capacity investigation also targeted more than a dozen US trading partners including Taiwan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, the EU, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland, Thailand and Vietnam.
China yesterday rebuked a US trade investigation into alleged overcapacity and said it reserved the right to take countermeasures, clouding the outlook for a new round of trade talks that is set to begin this weekend.
The US has no right to “unilaterally” determine whether a trading partner has “overcapacity” through its Section 301 investigation and take unilateral restrictive measures, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said in a statement.
China is conducting an assessment of the probes and reserves the right to take all necessary measures to defend its rights and interests, the ministry said.
A ministry spokesperson denied allegations of forced labor, calling them “a lie concocted by the US.”
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