Forced-Labor Enforcement Is Now a Tariff Issue: A Supplier Due-Diligence Reset
Forced-Labor Enforcement Is Now a Tariff Issue: A Supplier Due-Diligence Reset For decades, forced-labor compliance sat in a tidy moral box. Procurement teams ran supplier questionnaires, checked audit certificates, and moved on. If a shipment ever ran into trouble, it was a customs problem—an admissibility issue, not a cost-of-goods issue. That firewall is gone. Since July 24, 2026, the United States has applied new Section 301 duties of 10% or 12.5% to covered imports from 60 economies, explicitly because those economies failed to impose and enforce comprehensive forced-labor import prohibitions. Forced-labor enforcement is now a tariff issue, and procurement teams who treat it as a side conversation are absorbing material landed-cost hits they never modeled. This article explains the new tariff mechanics, delivers a practical due-diligence checklist, and shows how to build evidence chains and contract protections that hold up under scrutiny. If you are responsible for sourcing, c...
