Tariff Reboot |
President Donald Trump’s trade policy has acquired a second life. After the US Supreme Court curtailed key elements of the architecture that defined much of his economic agenda, the White House has returned with a familiar instrument wrapped in a different justification. This time, the target is not trade deficits, national security or industrial revival, but the global persistence of forced labour. The argument is politically attractive and difficult to oppose.
Few governments will publicly defend products tainted by coercive labour practices. Yet the significance of Washington’s latest tariff proposal lies less in the moral language surrounding it than in what it reveals about the direction of American trade policy. The United States is increasingly moving away from the post-Cold War assumption that trade should be governed primarily by efficiency and market access. Instead, trade is being redefined as an extension of strategic policy. Human rights, labour standards, national security, supply-chain resilience and geopolitical competition are becoming intertwined. Tariffs are no longer merely economic tools; they are........