The president’s pretext of stopping forced labour is only a ruse – he is trying to grab a share of global trade for the US

Here he goes again. The US President, Donald Trump, is increasing and decreasing tariffs willy-nilly, violating international agreements that he himself signed and almost surely violating federal law. The only difference this time is that he has a new pretext for abusing tariffs: stopping forced labour.

Of course, the administration is right that too little is being done about forced labour. But its stated concern is a ruse. With the new tariffs closely tracking the ones that Trump imposed on the basis of trade balances, are we supposed to believe that bilateral trade deficits just so happen to be highly correlated with the use of forced labour?

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