Trump imposes new double-digit tariffs on dozens of countries

President Donald Trump is going ahead with new double-digit tariffs on dozens of trading partners of the United States just as the clock runs out on Friday on stopgap levies he announced after a stinging defeat at the Supreme Court. The US will slap levies of 10 to 12.5 percent on imports from 60 countries accounting for 99 percent of US imports, charging that they have inadequately enforced bans on goods produced by forced labour. 'The United States has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it; it's well past time for our trading partners to do the same,' US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement on Thursday. John Diamond, director of the Center for Tax and Budget Policy at the Baker Institute, said the administration was looking for a new authority to replace the expiring tariffs and decided to use Section 301. 'It's a little bit ridiculous to think that over 60 major trading partners, including countries in the EU, are really relying on that much forced labour. It's kind of hard to believe,' Diamond told Al Jazeera. 'But I don't think the courts will want to overrule these tariffs as they did the IEEPA tariffs.'