The Supreme Court said Trump’s tariffs were illegal. Then a trade court struck down the replacement tariffs too. Now the administration is launching “forced labor” investigations into 58 countries — the EU, Canada, Brazil, basically anyone who trades with America — as the next legal vehicle to reimpose the same tariffs under a different statute. This is not economic policy. It’s a man running out of courtrooms.
While the lawyers scramble, 98,000 manufacturing jobs have vanished since the tariff push started. The factories are not roaring back. The towns built around those jobs are not roaring back. What is roaring back: the legal challenges, the statutory workarounds, and a brand-new round of Section 301 investigations the USTR wants to wrap up before July — conveniently when the struck-down tariffs expire and they need a fresh legal hook.
The “forced labor” framing is the darkest joke. An administration that spent the last year gutting the NLRB, cheering on AI-driven mass layoffs, and shredding overtime protections is suddenly very concerned about forced labor in other countries. The workers here know what this is. They always know.