The US’ slavery tariffs capturing Australia and dozens of other countries are “unjustified” and will hurt the two-way trading relationship, Anthony Albanese has declared while vowing to fight the decision “at every level”.The White House this week followed through on President Donald Trump’s pledge to slap levies as high as 12.5 per cent on countries not doing enough to keep forced labour out of their supply chains.Australia was captured at the top rate despite its standing as a global leader in anti-modern slavery laws.The new tariff came five months after the US Supreme Court struck down the Trump administration’s universal 10 per cent baseline duty, which ended as the new one kicked in, effectively hiking Australia’s rate by 2.5 per cent.In an interviewed aired on Sunday, the Prime Minister promised to protest the move personally with Mr Trump.“These are unjustified,” Mr Albanese told the ABC, adding that Canberra had already raised it “at every level of the Australia-US relationship”.“We have very strong provisions on modern slavery. We’re strengthening those even further by going through the supply chain issues and making sure that indeed substantial fines and penalties can be paid if those issues aren’t dealt with.”The Albanese government this month unveiled tougher anti-modern slavery measures threatening criminal charges for big companies that fail to stop modern slavery in their supply chains.Companies charged would need to prove “they took reasonable steps to prevent modern slavery” to defend themselves.Mr Albanese would not say if he thought the tariff was truly about slavery concerns but warned it would penalise Americans and “undermine” trade ties.“Tariffs are a penalty on consumers in the country that imposes them,” he said.“This will lead to higher costs in the United States and undermine the trading relationship that we have with our US friends.”US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer last month framed the “failure of our most important trading partners to address the importation of goods made with forced labor” as disadvantaging American workers.“This creates a dynamic where American workers are forced to compete globally on an unlevel playing field,” he said.“We will no longer tolerate this disparity.”Mr Greer welcomed some countries taking “initial steps to prevent the importation of forced labor goods” but said that “each of our trading partners must do more to ensure that trade does not perversely encourage and entrench forced labor globally”.Some 50 million people are trapped in modern slavery, according to Walk Free’s Global Slavery Index, with it most prevalent across electronics and clothesmaking hubs in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.Modern slavery, which includes forced labour, debt bondage and slavery, is a crime under Australian law, even if it happens overseas.Read related topics:Anthony Albanese