New US tariffs linked to claims of foreign forced labour dismay and anger trading partners

U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s lat­est set of tar­iffs drew ob­jec­tions Fri­day from Amer­i­ca’s trad­ing part­ners in­clud­ing Chi­na and Japan, with Aus­tralia’s trade min­is­ter slam­ming them as “com­plete­ly un­jus­ti­fied.”

The ad­min­is­tra­tion an­nounced tar­iffs of 10% to 12.5% on 60 economies late Thurs­day, say­ing the coun­tries had failed to ad­e­quate­ly en­force a ban on goods made with forced la­bor.

The new tar­iffs took ef­fect just as stop­gap levies Trump im­posed af­ter a sting­ing de­feat at the Supreme Court ex­pired at 12:01 a.m. Fri­day.

Coun­tries ob­ject to what they call un­found­ed la­bor claims

Aus­tralian Trade Min­is­ter Don Far­rell re­ject­ed claims link­ing Aus­tralia, a ma­jor ex­porter of beef, gold and cop­per, to mod­ern slav­ery and rais­ing the tar­iff on its ex­ports to the U.S. to 12.5% from the 10% lev­el im­posed af­ter Trump’s “Lib­er­a­tion Day” hikes last year.

“We be­lieve that amongst all of the coun­tries in the world Aus­tralia does take the is­sue of slav­ery, mod­ern slav­ery, se­ri­ous­ly, and will con­tin­ue to do that,” Far­rell told re­porters in Ade­laide.

Aus­tralia be­lieves the high­er tar­iffs are “com­plete­ly un­jus­ti­fied and we will con­tin­ue to lob­by the Unit­ed States Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to re­move all tar­iffs on Aus­tralian goods,” Far­rell said.

New Zealand Prime Min­is­ter Christo­pher Lux­on said the tar­iffs on his coun­try, al­so sub­ject to a 12.5% im­port du­ty, were “ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ing,” un­jus­ti­fied and harm­ful to trade.

A U.S. in­ves­ti­ga­tion serv­ing as the ba­sis for the tar­iffs did not pro­vide mean­ing­ful ev­i­dence to sup­port al­le­ga­tions of forced la­bor.

“Tar­iffs are not the way — they dri­ve up costs and un­cer­tain­ty for busi­ness­es,” he wrote on X.

Eu­ro­pean Union for­eign pol­i­cy chief Ka­ja Kallas ques­tioned the U.S. stance in com­ments on Chan­nel News Asia.

“If you com­pare our la­bor laws to the ones of the Unit­ed States, I mean we have, peo­ple have paid va­ca­tions, we have very good con­di­tions, la­bor con­di­tions for our em­ploy­ees, so it’s not re­al­ly ground­ed,” Kallas said.

Al­so fac­ing a 12.5% tar­iff, Sin­ga­pore’s Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, which re­it­er­at­ed its stance of not con­don­ing the use of forced la­bor, said it would “con­tin­ue to en­gage the US­TR (Unit­ed States Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive) to ex­plore op­tions.”

Some hope to fore­stall the new tar­iffs

Japan like­wise protest­ed the 12.5% tar­iff im­posed on its ex­ports, not­ing Tokyo had been re­as­sured by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion that there would be no more tar­iffs on top of an ear­li­er agree­ment on a 10% U.S. im­port du­ty.

“Our un­der­stand­ing is both sides are still com­mit­ted to that,” Chief Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary Mi­noru Ki­hara told a rou­tine news con­fer­ence.

“It is re­gret­table that the mea­sure im­pos­es tar­iffs on the grounds of non-ex­is­tence of mea­sures ban­ning im­ports of goods made by forced la­bor, even though Japan’s in­dus­try and trade are in line with in­ter­na­tion­al rules,” Ki­hara said.

South Ko­rea said it will main­tain close com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Unit­ed States to pre­serve a mu­tu­al “bal­ance of ben­e­fits.”

South Ko­rea’s trade min­istry said the an­nounce­ment eased some un­cer­tain­ty over U.S. trade pol­i­cy, but not­ed that a Sec­tion 301 in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­leged Ko­re­an ex­cess pro­duc­tion con­tin­ues.

The com­bined du­ties on South Ko­re­an ex­ports should not ex­ceed 15%, the min­istry said in a state­ment.

Thai­land not­ed it is sub­ject to the new 12.5% tar­iff by the U.S. un­der the forced la­bor pro­vi­sion, but the mea­sure ex­empts around 2,120 items, rep­re­sent­ing more than half the val­ue of Thai goods ex­port­ed to the U.S.

Chi­na op­pos­es uni­lat­er­al tar­iffs in ‘all forms’

Chi­na’s Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs said it “op­pos­es all forms of uni­lat­er­al tar­iffs” in re­sponse to the new 12.5% tar­iffs, re­it­er­at­ing a long­stand­ing state­ment by Bei­jing.

“Tar­iff wars and trade wars do not serve any par­ties’ in­ter­ests,” min­istry spokesman Lin Jian told a reg­u­lar press con­fer­ence.

Trade ten­sions have cloud­ed re­la­tions be­tween Chi­na and the U.S., two of the world’s biggest economies, as Trump’s hefty “Lib­er­a­tion Day” tar­iffs re­sult­ed in a sharp drop in Chi­nese ex­ports to the U.S.

Trump and Chi­nese leader Xi Jin­ping, who agreed to set up new boards of trade and in­vest­ment at their mid-May meet­ing in Bei­jing, are ex­pect­ed to meet again in Sep­tem­ber.

Some Chi­nese ex­porters say, how­ev­er, the im­pacts are so far lim­it­ed as the lat­est U.S. tar­iffs on Chi­na are still at low­er lev­els than last year’s rates, which were ini­tial­ly 34%.

“Of course it’d be best if they (tar­iffs) are not there,” said Richard Chan, man­ag­er of Gold­en Arts Gifts & Decor, which man­u­fac­tures Christ­mas trees and dec­o­ra­tions in the south­ern Chi­nese city of Dong­guan and sup­plies glob­al­ly to those in­clud­ing Wal­mart.

Gold­en Arts’ share of sales to the U.S., how­ev­er, al­ready have fall­en to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10% to 20% as U.S. tar­iffs added more un­cer­tain­ty over the past months. They have piv­ot­ed more to Eu­rope, which now ac­counts for rough­ly 70% of their sales, Chan said.

The lat­est im­port du­ties might stick

Wendy Cut­ler, a for­mer se­nior U.S. trade of­fi­cial, said the lat­est round of tar­iffs in­volved “few sur­pris­es” since they range just be­tween 10% and 12.5%.

The U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive’s of­fice spent four months in­ves­ti­gat­ing the ba­sis for those tar­iffs to meet le­gal re­quire­ments un­der Sec­tion 301 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974.

“Time will tell whether the third at­tempt to im­pose tar­iffs is the charm and this ac­tion stands up to le­gal chal­lenges,” said Cut­ler, se­nior vice pres­i­dent of the Asia So­ci­ety Pol­i­cy In­sti­tute.

These du­ties are less like­ly than ear­li­er ones to be over­ruled by U.S. courts, she said.

Fur­ther tar­iffs may be com­ing in the fall re­lat­ed to al­leged struc­tur­al ex­cess ca­pac­i­ty of trad­ing part­ners, she not­ed.

Ex­perts say these tar­iffs may be less dis­rup­tive than oth­ers

Wash­ing­ton is gen­er­al­ly tend­ing to en­gage in in­creased trade fric­tion, William Brat­ton of BNP Paribas said in a re­search note Fri­day.

“On the pos­i­tive side, how­ev­er, these tar­iffs are low­er than the ear­li­er (Emer­gency Pow­ers Act) ‘rec­i­p­ro­cal’ tar­iffs and ap­pear to ex­empt a sub­stan­tial pro­por­tion of Asia’s cur­rent trade flows with the U.S.,” he said.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion in­clud­ed many ex­clu­sions of prod­ucts from the tar­iffs, in­clud­ing for goods the U.S. does not pro­duce, Cut­ler not­ed.

“This should re­duce the im­pact of these du­ties. Nev­er­the­less, they will con­tribute to high­er prices both for end con­sumers and busi­ness­es im­port­ing in­puts and ma­chin­ery,” she said. —BANGKOK (AP)

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Sto­ry by ELAINE KURTEN­BACH and CHAN HO-HIM | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Chan Ho-Him re­port­ed from Hong Kong. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Tong-hyung Kim in Seoul, South Ko­rea, Mari Ya­m­aguchi in Tokyo and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Grant Peck in Bangkok and Ken Morit­sugu in Bei­jing con­tributed to this re­port.