World Leaders Furious Over Trump’s Made-Up Reason for Fresh Tariffs

President Trump’s justification for his latest round of tariffs has angered foreign leaders.

The White House on Friday instituted tariffs between 10 and 12.5 percent on 60 countries around the world by citing Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows import duties to be placed on countries that use forced labor. But U.S. trading partners have slammed the move, with Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell calling them “completely unjustified.”

“We believe that amongst all of the countries in the world Australia does take the issue of slavery, modern slavery, seriously, and will continue to do that,” Farrell said.

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon called the tariffs “extremely disappointing,” and said that the U.S. did not have the evidence to say that his country uses slave labor.

“Tariffs are not the way—they drive up costs and uncertainty for businesses,” he wrote in a post on X.

European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas took offense to the allegations of forced labor, saying that their labor laws are better for workers than those of the U.S.

“If you compare our labor laws to the ones of the United States, I mean we have, people have paid vacations, we have very good conditions, labor conditions for our employees, so it’s not really grounded,” Kallas said.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said, “It is regrettable that the measure imposes tariffs on the grounds of non-existence of measures banning imports of goods made by forced labor, even though Japan’s industry and trade are in line with international rules.”

It’s pretty clear that the Trump administration is simply trying to use any legal justification for its tariffs that will avoid being overturned by the courts this time, unlike the president’s last attempt. Forced labor is still a problem internationally, but Trump has not presented any specific evidence of any business in these 60 countries having a slavery problem. ...