The Section 301 Surge Continues: Investigating the Adoption/Enforcement/Administration of Forced Labor Import Bans

The next wave of Section 301 investigations has arrived. This time, the focus is on “acts, policies, and practices of various economies related to the failure to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor.” It names 60 economies. That’s a huge number, especially considering that one is the entire European Union.

As Simon’s recent post explained, Section 301 has been brought to the forefront in the wake of the SCOTUS IEEPA ruling. However, those I’ve spoken with indicate that these investigations have simmered in the Trade Policy Staff Committee (TPSC) for months. Those discussions first began when the Court of International Trade (CIT) decided V.O.S. Selections, Inc. v. United States (finding that the President’s tariffs exceeded its authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)) on May 28, 2025. Despite the long runway, these investigations raise significant questions. This latest batch, in particular, raises longstanding issues in trade and labor governance.

As I’ve consistently argued, the administration's myopic focus on forced labor misses the deeper issue: systemic worker disempowerment in global trade. By neglecting widespread violations of the right to organize and bargain collectively in factories throughout the supply chain, the U.S. pursues a futile whack-a-mole approach (addressing isolated abuses rather than root causes) while companies exploiting cheap labor go unchecked by consumers.

But whether I or anyone else agrees on the process, Congress and the Trump administration remain steadfast in their siloed approach to solving the world’s forced labor problems. Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 and the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act (UFLPA) grant Customs and Border Protection (CBP) the authority to investigate and enforce prohibitions against any “goods, wares, articles, and merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in any foreign country by convict labor and/or forced labor and/or indentured labor….” The U.S. government, including this latest Section 301 announcement, defines forced labor by citing the International Labor Organization (ILO) indicators. For this post, I set aside my broader critique of the misdirected effort on forced labor to zero in on specific and urgent flaws in the current Section 301 investigation.

The Announcement

On March 12, 2026, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Federal Register Notice (FRN) expresses frustration with the global rise of forced labor. It complains that, despite its efforts to get trade partners to adopt “measures intended to stop the importation or sale of products using forced labor…none of these countries has adopted and effectively enforced a forced labor import prohibition to date.” USTR then ties that failure to U.S. economic interests, noting, without embellishment, that it “may negatively affect U.S. commerce.” U.S. exports must also compete in global markets with products made with forced labor, it adds. Those factors could show practices “in violation of, or inconsistent with, the international legal rights of the United States” or could constitute “a persistent pattern of conduct that permits any form of forced or compulsory labor,” in a way that leads to a finding under Section 301 that the foreign failures are “unreasonable or discriminatory and burden or restrict U.S. commerce.”

The United States has collaborated with Canada and Mexico under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) to ensure that both trade partners have administrative procedures to investigate and ban forced labor imports. CBP led numerous discussions with agencies in both countries to share expertise and build their capacity. This latest Section 301 investigation intends to pressure the sixty named trade partners (even, inexplicably, including Canada and Mexico) to adopt similar enforcement procedures. It is highly problematic for the four reasons I address below.

The Critique

First, CBP’s forced labor ban procedures are inadequate. The agency cites ILO standards, but most of CBP’s investigators haven't received ILO training. CBP’s investigations largely proceed without independent oversight (“law enforcement sensitive”) or meaningful contestation (but note the recent CIT case finding CBP’s enforcement actions arbitrary and capricious). CBP routinely fails to substantiate evidentiary cases that align with the standards it claims to enforce. This isn’t the type of enforcement practice we should export to other countries.

Second, CBP has dramatically diminished its enforcement actions. Without bogging you down in the procedures, CBP issues a Withhold Release Order (WRO) or “Finding” when it has a reasonable suspicion or probable cause that imports were made by forced labor. In 2020, it issued thirteen WROs, a modest number considering the high incidence of forced labor in the global supply chain. In 2025, it issued a paltry four WROs. Redirected resources toward the UFLPA do not account for this stark decline, or, if they do, I’d love an accounting of CBP’s roughly $100-115 million forced labor budget. And this is the supposedly robust system of forced labor import bans that the United States now insists other countries replicate?

Third, we are barking up the wrong tree. As mentioned, the FRN directly targets the European Union as a subject of its investigation. The same European Union whose own forced labor ban applies to imports and exports through a rigorous, detailed regime of investigations and enforcement. Unlike CBP procedures, the European Union’s procedures uphold strict evidentiary standards (requiring a “substantiated concern” of forced labor and “objective, factual, and verifiable information”) and guarantee companies an opportunity to respond to allegations. The administration’s frustrations undoubtedly reflect its concerns about the European Union’s decision to delay implementation until 2027, which, in my view, gives the European Union time to ensure a proper rollout. However, if the Trump administration intends to use tariffs to force the adoption and implementation of procedures, it needs to take a hard look at the WRO statistics I referenced above. In any event, if agencies on both sides of the Atlantic engage in the capacity-building conversations USTR's FRN hopes to initiate, I hope the U.S. government pays close attention.

Fourth, assuming the U.S. government doesn’t care about how humiliating it will be to share its subpar procedures with other countries, it should care that these procedures may (and rightly) be used to block offending U.S. exports. The ILO’s forced labor instruments, as cited by the U.S. government, prohibit the use of private prison labor unless the workers have freely consented in writing and receive wages, social security, and occupational safety and health protections. The United States loves private prison labor, and its conditions hardly meet these criteria. Just ask the ILO. Private and public prisons in the United States use prison labor to manufacture goods that enter the global stream of commerce. According to an investigation by the Corporate Accountability Lab, U.S. prisons sell plastics, wire harnesses, agricultural products, and clothing that enter the global supply chain.

Like its other Section 301 investigations, USTR is inviting public comments before making its determination. I hope the CBP’s lax evidentiary standards, weak procedures, and questionable commitment to enforcement, along with U.S. forced labor practices, come to light. The U.S. administration must fully reckon with these deficiencies before imposing U.S. models on the world.