U.S. sets hearings on forced-labor trade probes across dozens of countries

The U.S. Trade Representative is putting its forced-labor trade strategy on public display next week, opening hearings that will test whether Washington is prepared to turn years of rhetoric into real market pressure on imports tied to coerced work.

The hearings are scheduled for April 28 and April 29 at the U.S. International Trade Commission’s main hearing room at 500 E Street SW in Washington, D.C., starting at 10:00 a.m. ET. They cover Section 301 investigations into 60 economies, which USTR says are among the United States’ largest trading partners. The agency will not livestream the proceedings, but it said a full transcript will be posted afterward on ustr.gov.

At the center of the case is a basic policy question: whether foreign acts, policies and practices related to the failure to ban forced-labor imports are unreasonable or discriminatory and burden U.S. commerce. USTR launched the underlying investigations on March 12 under Section 301(b) of the Trade Act of 1974, after Ambassador Jamieson Greer consulted the interagency Section 301 Committee and requested consultations with the governments under scrutiny. Written comments and requests to appear were due April 15, and rebuttal comments are due seven days after the final hearing.

The scope is unusually broad. By examining 60 economies at once, USTR is treating forced labor not as a one-off dispute but as a systemic supply-chain problem that can run through factories, farms and intermediaries across multiple sectors. That matters for American importers, manufacturers and retailers because a forced-labor finding can lead to tariffs, import restrictions or other pressure on foreign governments to step up enforcement. It also raises the stakes for foreign suppliers that depend on access to the U.S. market, where even a small compliance failure can trigger wider scrutiny.

USTR says the issue reaches beyond labor enforcement. The office frames forced labor as a humanitarian concern, but also as a foreign-policy, national-security and competitiveness issue, arguing that coerced labor can give foreign producers an artificial cost advantage. U.S. law has prohibited imports made in whole or in part with forced labor for almost 100 years, which makes the current probes less a new legal theory than a test of whether existing rules will be enforced with any force.

For Washington, the hearings will show whether Section 301 can still function as a serious trade lever, or whether the process becomes another public review that leaves the underlying supply chains untouched.