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Donald Trump’s move to impose a fresh round of tariffs on more than 80 countries has drawn criticism from both Democratic politicians and his own allies.
Jamieson Greer, the US trade representative, announced that the Trump administration “is imposing tariffs on more than 80 countries for their failure to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor.”
The tariffs will replace a 10% global duty that was due to expire for supposedly failing to crack down on forced labor. However, congresswoman Linda Sánchez, a California Democrat, denounced the pretext for the new tariffs as a sham.
“President Trump isn’t serious about combating forced labor. He’s trying to make an end-run around the Supreme Court and Congress to reimpose his illegal tariffs,” Sánchez wrote on social media.
She continued:
If he was serious, he would not be applying the same tariff rate to China, one of the worst forced labor abusers in the world, as he does to countries like Australia. Then again, unlike China, Australia, doesn’t manufacture any Trump corporation products.
This is the same administration that gutted funding to combat forced labor through cuts to the Bureau of International Labor Affairs and rolled back worker protections here at home, while encouraging companies to profit off some of the world’s worst forced labor abusers through his proposed US-China Board of Trade.
We need to take forced labor seriously. But that includes addressing our problems here at home, including by taking on the export of goods made with American prison labor. Slapping more tariffs on every country that upsets the president isn’t the way to do it.
“Trump is hell-bent on raising your prices,” congressman Brendan Boyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat said in a statement on Donald Trump’s lastest tariffs on 85 countries. “His new tariffs are a nationwide sales tax that will only serve to make life harder for Americans just trying to make ends meet.”
And even the president’s own allies has raised concerns over the latest round of tariffs, Politico is reporting.
One person close to the White House, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said:
Everything that you do that’s not focused on affordability is not helpful. This might not be a negative five, but it’s a negative 0.5. Anything that you’re doing that is not on the plus side of the scale is a problem.
When you announce new tariffs, it’s not like, okay, well, let’s see what they do. It’s, ‘Oh crap, those are the bad things.’
Another White House source told Politico:
I think Republicans are comfortable with the threat, even though that has some market impacts. But actual revenue coming away from people’s pocketbooks is not what Republicans are happy with.
Any conversation about tariffs, unless it’s reducing them, is a bad conversation for Republicans.
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
- The government of Brazil has rejected the Trump administration’s claim that it, and 84 other nations, failed to enforce a ban on forced labor, and called the new 12.5% US tariff on imports from Brazil “completely arbitrary and unjustified”.
- The Pentagon’s official online list of service members killed in the ongoing Iran war does not include the four soldiers who died during renewed fighting over the weekend, despite the fact that their names were included in a Pentagon press release on the formal transfer of their remains back to the United States on Wednesday.
- The premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, said “it’s very hard to deal with President Trump when he changes his mind every single day. One day the prime minister is with him side by side, and next thing you know, President Trump turns on him like a rabid dog.”