The United States Trade Representative’s final finding in its Section 301 investigations on alleged forced labor practices in 60 economies worldwide took effect on 24 July 2026.¹ Additional duties of 10% or 12.5% now apply to all products of the 60 investigated economies, subject to exemptions set out in two annexes. Goods loaded onto a vessel and in transit on the final mode of transit before 24 July escape the additional duty if they enter the US before 28 July.

Global Trade Alert parsed and repackaged the USTR’s 431-page Federal Register notice into a single self-contained report per economy, so that trade businesses, trade practitioners, analysts, and other stakeholders can clearly and immediately work with the provisions that concern them.

Four rate treatments cover the 60 economies

The rate an accused economy pays depends on its forced-labor import regime. Economies that ban imports of forced-labor goods, that committed to such a ban in an Agreement on Reciprocal Trade with the US, or that operate a partial regime pay 10%; every other economy pays 12.5%.

Seventeen economies, among them the United Kingdom, India, Mexico, and Canada, pay the flat 10% rate. The European Union and Taiwan also qualify for 10%, applied net of a product's most-favoured-nation (MFN) duty.

Japan, South Korea, and Switzerland received a net-of-MFN treatment at 12.5%. The remaining 38 economies, including China, Brazil, Vietnam, and Russia, pay the flat 12.5% rate. The new duty applies in addition to the existing Section 301 duties on imports from China and Brazil.

The determinations behind the rates fall into two groups. USTR found that 54 economies failed to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on importing goods produced with forced labor, and that six economies, namely Canada, Ecuador, the European Union, Indonesia, Mexico, and Pakistan, failed only to enforce the prohibition effectively.

The notice also directs, under certain conditions, tariff-rate quotas to be imposed on Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Malaysia, tied to each economy's importation of US cotton and textile inputs. The quotas would run for an initial three years and let a set volume of textiles and apparel enter free of the Section 301 duty; USTR will set the mechanism and its start date in a separate notice.

The Section 301 finding’s three layers

The notice reads as three self-contained blocks:

Pages 1 to 72 of the USTR’s 431-page opus carry the body of the notice body: the proceedings, USTR's responses to public comments, and the determinations for all 60 economies.
Pages 73 to 136 carry Annex I, which writes the action into the tariff schedule through 101 new Chapter 99 headings and US Note 52, the legal mechanism for every exemption.
Pages 137 to 431 carry Annex II, the fifteen exemption lists named as Parts A to O.

Exemptions run through one universal list and 14 targeted lists

Annex II of Part A covers 2,120 tariff codes for all 60 economies, but only 863 of them are exempt as entered. A further 541 apply only to goods entered for civil-aircraft use; 700 only to goods entered for pharmaceutical use; and 16 only to other specifically named articles. The universal list grew by 465 codes from 1,655 proposed in June.

Thirteen economies received their own additional lists, Parts B to N: the United Kingdom, the European Union, Switzerland, Malaysia, Cambodia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Argentina, Bangladesh, Taiwan, Indonesia, Ecuador, and Jordan. Part O, listing a further 1,737 textile and apparel codes, covers Jordan alone, and also El Salvador and Guatemala where the goods are entered free of duty under the Dominican Republic-Central America free trade agreement (CAFTA-DR).

US Note 52 carries other exemptions such as goods under enumerated Section 232 programs, goods of Canada and Mexico entered free of duty under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), CAFTA-DR textiles, and informational materials.

Two limits on relief are worth noting. USTR declined to establish an exclusion process and directed no periodic review, so modification runs through Section 307 of the Trade Act rather than through product-level applications. And goods subject to the duty that enter a US foreign trade zone may be admitted only under privileged foreign status, unless they qualify for domestic status, which fixes their duty treatment on admission.

Understand the USTR notice, economy by economy

Global Trade Alert repackaged the notice into 60 self-contained PDFs, one per investigated economy. Each open onto a cover page providing that economy's rate, the dates in force, and the Annex parts that apply to it. Each report has a navigation sidebar.

The reports on all 60 economies can be downloaded as one zipped archive (75 MB). The economies are listed by ISO three-letter code alphabetically. Each code opens that economy's PDF.

Check out Global Trade Alert’s Section 301 forced labor explainer.