Amici Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), a 501(c)(3) non-profit think-tank, established in 1989 and active on a broad range of public policy issues.1 PPI institutionally, and Gresser personally, have an interest in this case given their long-time advocacy for trade policy grounded in sound economic analysis and careful assessment of facts and trade statistics, and their assessment that forced labor is an egregious violation of human rights. Amici submit this brief to assist the court on a discrete question of statutory authority: whether Section 301 permits USTR to impose tariffs on 60 economies accounting for nearly all U.S. imports, based on general assertions that trade anywhere in the world in goods of an indeterminate amount that have potentially been made with forced labor sufficiently demonstrates a burden on U.S. commerce.
USTR’s June 2nd, 2026, Report entitled “Section 301 Investigations of Acts, Policies, and Practices of Various Economies Related to the Failure of Each Economy to Impose and Effectively Enforce a Prohibition on the Importation of Goods Produced with Forced Labor” (hereafter “the Report”), covers 60 economies. Together they provided about 99% of America’s imported goods in 2025. The Report provides the justification for USTR’s “Final Determination”2 imposing tariffs of 12.5% above MFN rates on goods from 41 of these economies, 10% above MFN rates on goods from 17, and 10% on two, as a “remedy” for their lack of a law similar to America’s ban on imports of goods made wholly or partially with the use of forced labor, or for supposed failure to sufficiently enforce such a law. Extrapolating from ten months’ experience with the 10% worldwide tariff temporarily imposed by Executive Order 14257, this will likely cost American goods-buyers – families, manufacturers, construction firms, restaurants, clinics, retail shops, and so on – about $100 billion annually. This is roughly double the money raised by the lawful and Congressionally authorized Harmonized Tariff Schedule, and nearly 100 times the combined $1.3 billion average annual value of goods shipments Customs and Border Protection has blocked or seized over the last five years on “reasonable suspicion”, or actual demonstration, of forced labor content.
We at PPI share the view expressed in the Report that forced labor is an egregious violation of human rights. We likewise agree that U.S. policy has an important role in eliminating it worldwide as well as at home. We are not, however, persuaded by the Report’s premise that the self-evident effectiveness and superiority of U.S. policy justify imposing tariff penalties on virtually all U.S. imports from every other major economy. And as a matter of law and policy, we are not persuaded that the Report’s recommendations are genuinely intended to address forced labor, given the lack of any discussion of using the tariffs as leverage to eliminate the offending practices or adopt stronger enforcement mechanisms.
Whatever the administration’s intent, the Report does not satisfy the basic requirement Section 301 imposes for imposition of tariffs – that is, it does not demonstrate that each foreign government’s “unreasonable or discriminatory” “acts, policies or practices” have created a “burden” on American commerce. The Report does not show that any of the 60 listed economies actually import goods made with the use of forced labor. Neither does it show that such imports, if they actually occur, have any necessary effect on U.S. exports or American import-competing businesses and workers. The Report does not establish any burden on U.S. commerce. Therefore the tariff action taken pursuant to it is illegal.
