US small businesses challenge Trump’s new ‘forced labor’ tariffs

What the report says

Al Jazeera, citing Reuters, reported that two United States small businesses filed a lawsuit on Friday in the US Court of International Trade in New York challenging President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs on imports from 60 trading partners. The businesses argue that the administration exceeded presidential authority and must provide more specific, country-by-country legal findings tied to alleged forced labor before imposing the duties.

According to the report, the new tariffs are 10 percent and 12.5 percent and apply to trading partners including the European Union. The administration says the measures respond to claims that those partners are not doing enough to prevent exports made with forced labor. The tariffs began as a temporary 10 percent global tariff was expiring.

The plaintiffs, supported by a nonprofit legal organization that previously won challenges to earlier Trump tariffs, say the new policy is an attempt to revive measures that courts have already rejected. Al Jazeera reported that the US Supreme Court ruled on February 20 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not allow the president to impose broad unilateral tariffs on trading partners. A separate temporary global tariff imposed under another authority was also struck down by the US trade court, and the administration is appealing.

The latest duties rely on Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, a tool historically used against unfair foreign trade practices. The lawsuit contends that past Section 301 actions were more targeted by country and sector, while the current approach is unusually broad. The case matters because it could shape how far presidents may go in using tariffs as foreign-policy leverage.