U.S. President Donald Trump answers a question after an announcement on U.S. nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., July 24. EPA-Yonhap
WASHINGTON — Two small U.S. businesses on Friday filed a lawsuit against new tariffs on dozens of U.S. trading partners that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration announced the previous day over forced labor concerns, according to a litigation firm.
The Liberty Justice Center said that it filed the lawsuit in the U.S. Court of International Trade on behalf of Burlap & Barrel, a New York-based online retailer, and Collective Horology, a California-based retailer, after the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced new tariffs of up to 12.5 percent on South Korea and other economies.
The latest U.S. duties came after the USTR conducted investigations into 60 economies under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act to determine whether they had taken sufficient steps to ban imports made with forced labor. The duties took effect Friday as the administration's 150-day 10 percent global tariff lapsed on the day.
The complaint alleges that the USTR acted "arbitrarily and capriciously" by imposing near-uniform tariffs across 60 materially different economies "without a reasoned, record-based explanation" for how the tariffs would address the practices the USTR identified.
