What happened
The United States introduced tariffs tied to allegations of forced labour in goods supply chains. The policy question is whether the United States is mainly addressing forced-labour abuse or mainly using tariffs to improve its negotiating leverage in trade disputes.
The United States does not apply forced-labour-linked tariff measures uniformly across all countries and all products, which limits the claim that forced-labour prevention alone is the only governing objective.
India reduced the tariff exposure described in the forced-labour context by banning imports of goods made using forced labour. The proposed tariff rate for India linked to that condition fell from 12.5% to 10%.
The implementation challenge is verification. Indian officials would need access to verify forced-labour conditions in other countries, and such access can be difficult to obtain in practice.
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