Message from the United States Trade Representative

Dear Reader,

The Biden-Harris Administration focused on fundamentally rewriting our story on trade. For decades, the traditional approach to trade, which prioritized aggressive liberalization and tariff elimination, did generate wealth.

At the same time, the approach came with significant costs and side effects. Prosperity without inclusiveness contributed to rising inequality and wealth concentration. The system incentivized countries to compete by maintaining or lowering standards, as companies sought to minimize costs in pursuit of efficiency. The search for cheaper labor costs came at the expense of workers’ rights and wellbeing and has included forced labor. This was the race to the bottom, where exploitation was rewarded to compete and survive.

The United States has banned imports made in whole or in part with forced labor since 1930, closing a loophole in that ban in 2016 to make it more effective. During multilateral trade negotiations after World War II, the United States pushed to internationalize the ban on forced labor in trade. We were not successful, and forced labor continues to infect global trade to this day. In their 2022 report, the International Labor Organization, Walk Free, and the International Organization for Migration estimate that 28 million people today are in forced labor, an increase of 3 million people since 2016. This number highlights that, despite national laws and international conventions, we, as a global community, have not lived up to the promise of protecting our fellow humans from forced labor. This also means that many of the products we trade continue to be tainted by human exploitation. Unscrupulous employers and labor intermediaries continue to abuse their power for profit and subject adults and children to the purposeful withholding of wages, excessive work hours, threats to their physical safety, restriction of movement, deprivation of basic needs, and other modes of severe coercion, such as sexual violence.

In addition to constituting a human rights abuse, forced labor is used to gain a competitive advantage by reducing production costs. For that reason, forced labor not only harms the working people subjected to it, but also companies that do not rely on forced labor to produce their goods.

It has been my priority as the United States Trade Representative to use trade as a force for good and to address this horrendous practice. We have transformed the way we view and treat workers— not just in the United States, but across the world. We have highlighted the humanity in our supply chains and used trade tools to defend the rights of workers to freely associate and collectively bargain, protect health and safety in the workplace, and insist on a world free of forced labor.

As a member of the President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons and the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force, I am proud to put forward this first-ever Trade Strategy to Combat Forced Labor in support of the U.S. Government’s National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking and Memorandum on Advancing Worker Empowerment, Rights, and High Labor Standards Globally. It demonstrates the commitment of the United States to utilize all trade-related tools to address forced labor and chart a different and better path to the way we trade. T

In this strategy, you will see the deployment of new tools and strengthening of existing tools, as the United States seeks to make the global trading system fairer and more just. We will work to: (1) undertake inclusive processes to inform an equitable approach in the advancement of the President’s Trade Agenda to eradicate forced labor; (2) fully utilize all available trade tools to end forced labor; (3) develop and implement innovative trade policies to address forced labor in global supply chains; and (4) increase global action to combat forced labor as an unfair trade practice.

My team and I are grateful to the survivor leaders, trade unions, civil society organizations, companies, business associations, scientific groups, academics, and concerned citizens that took the time to provide the U.S. Government with comments on how to shape this strategy. Thanks to you, my office has developed a robust toolkit and due diligence framework to protect workers from forced labor and other labor rights abuses.

The United States will continue to fortify and build on that strong foundation. It is our hope that you see yourselves reflected here, for it is with your continued partnership that we can make expeditious and meaningful progress in the global reduction of forced labor in traded goods and services. The Biden-Harris Administration has stood with you, and we have acted. In addition to this strategy, our Administration issued importer guidance and an enforcement strategy to put into effect the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. We are implementing the enforcement strategy and steadily adding to the Entity List created by the law to prevent entry into the United States of goods produced with forced labor by specific companies. We also collaborated with Canada and Mexico to implement the forced labor import prohibition committed to under the USMCA and have pushed other trade partners to adopt similar legislation. Additionally, we have collaborated with trade partners, including Japan and the European Union, to carry out our shared principles to combat forced labor. We initiated a 301 investigation regarding Nicaragua, the firstever to investigate acts, policies, and practices that may constitute violations of labor rights. The United States also tabled text at the World Trade Organization to begin to address the scourge of forced labor of fishers.

This strategy outlines how the United States can continue to build on our efforts and use trade to end forced labor. It is an invitation to all of you and our allies and partners to work with the United States. I hope you will join us to make the global race to the top real and lasting and break the cycle of human exploitation now and for future generations.

Sincerely,

Katherine Tai

Ambassador January 13, 2025

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