US’s 10% tariff on India has links to Tamil Nadu’s forced labour

WASHINGTON/CHENNAI: The criminal callousness with which the evil of bonded labour was being conveniently ignored for long has come at a cost for Tamil Nadu, as the report by the Bureau of International Labor Affairs of the US has listed child labour or bonded labour in rice mills, quarries, and thread and yarn sector in the State while imposing the 10% tariff on goods that the US imposed as part of its action against products made using forced labour.

According to the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs’s report citing ILO, as of September 2024, children worked as bonded labourers in the rice mills of Tamil Nadu. It cites an ILO study which said over 1,000 families worked in bonded labour in rice mills in a single district of TN.

The ILO data also show that as many as 5 lakh stone quarry workers, including entire families, in Tamil Nadu were bonded labourers. Similarly, workers in spinning mills in the State were often recruited using deception about working conditions and wages.

On June 3, when the US had proposed tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act, India was bracketed among countries attracting 12.5% levies, but Washington took note of the amendment New Delhi made to its foreign trade policy prohibiting the import of goods produced using forced labour.

On July 14, the Union government amended the foreign trade policy to prohibit the import of goods produced using forced labour, amid a US investigation into forced labour practices in 60 countries, including India.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced the new tariffs on 60 countries on Thursday, a day before the expiration of 10% additional levies on all countries.

The USTR statement said that Greer had made the final action, at President Donald Trump’s direction, under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 by imposing tariffs on 60 economies for their failure to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labour.

Countries that do not have laws barring goods produced using forced labour such as China, the United Kingdom and Japan will face tariffs of 12.5%.

The forced labour tariffs will not apply to raw materials that would lead to unavailability of domestic supply; products that would cause economy-wide disruptions and on products that cannot be produced or grown in sufficient quantities in the US.

Of the 60 countries, the 10% rate applies to 17 countries, including Canada, the UK, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The other 43 will have to bear 12.5%.

The action will begin to correct what is both a human rights abuse and a distortive trade practice to improve the welfare of workers everywhere, Greer said in a statement here.

As per the US report, the goods that India produced or imported that involved forced labour included bricks, carpets, palm-oil blends, cottonseed, embellished textiles, fireworks, footwear, garments, glass bangles, incense stick, leather accessories, matches, e-waste, rice, rubber gloves, sandstone, shrimp, silk fabric, stones, tea, thread/yarn.

According to a report in The Washington Post, the Trump administration is expected to introduce another set of tariffs within weeks that will apply to goods from nations that subsidise excess manufacturing capacity