Washington, D.C. — Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., today issued the following statement in response to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative announcing investigations into 60 countries regarding alleged failure to prohibit forced labor imports.
“I have spent years pushing the executive branch to get serious about fighting forced labor, but this investigation misses the mark. The Trump administration has repeatedly shown it couldn’t care less about helping workers by gutting programs to support labor rights at home and abroad and giving a free pass to Trump donors with forced labor in their supply chains,” Wyden said. “Instead of taking tough action against actual instances of forced labor around the world, the administration is cooking up sham investigations so they can stack tariffs on things Americans buy from our 60 top trading partners. No one should be fooled that these announcements are anything but another way for Trump to slap more taxes on American families while he coddles his billionaire allies.”
The investigations are under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, intended to address foreign actions that burden U.S. commerce. Wyden has led the U.S. Senate’s efforts to crack down on forced labor and support worker rights abroad, including closing a major loophole in the U.S. ban on imports made with forced labor and coauthoring the Brown-Wyden Rapid Response Mechanism in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which enables speedy investigations of labor violations at individual factories in Mexico.
A web version of this statement is here.
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