From today, July 24, Dutch goods going to the United States face an extra tariff of 10% or 12.5%. The official reason? Forced labour.
Yes, you read that right: forced labour. The US says the EU isn’t doing enough to keep goods made with forced labour out of its market, so the tariff is a little nudge.
However, Brussels, which passed a law banning those goods in 2024, has a different word for it: unjustified.
New US tariffs hit up to 60 countries
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced the measure on July 23. Covering 60 economies, in a bid to “correct what is both a human rights abuse and distortive trade practice to improve the welfare of workers everywhere.”
Countries with a forced labour import ban already in place pay 10%, while everyone else pays 12.5%. The EU sits awkwardly between the two, with certain products charged at both rates and a list of exemptions still being sorted out.
As the Netherlands doesn’t have its own rate, whatever the EU gets hit with, Dutch exporters do, too.
The timing is doing some heavy lifting
Trump’s previous global tariff of 10% expires this Friday, July 24. His new tariff, meanwhile, starts this very same Friday.
That gap of precisely zero days isn’t an accident. The US Supreme Court struck down much of his earlier tariff programme, so his team went looking for a different law to hang the tariffs on, and landed on Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.
By law, this section lets a president act against “unfair” foreign trade practices without asking Congress.
“The impression is increasingly emerging that a tariff measure is sought first, and only then is a suitable legal justification found,” Bernd Lange, chair of the European Parliament’s trade committee, states.
Clearly not one to mince words, he branded the US investigation “utterly absurd”, given the EU ban on forced labour products.
What’s actually behind the forced labour claim?
Needless to say, “forced labour” isn’t a technicality invented for this tariff. The International Labour Organisation estimates that around 28 million people worldwide were in forced labour in 2021, with a large share producing goods that end up in global supply chains.
The US has banned imports made with forced labour since the Tariff Act of 1930, and tightened it considerably in 2021 with a law targeting goods from Xinjiang in China.
The EU’s own ban, signed in 2024, applies to any product sold in the EU market regardless of origin.
However, the crux of the issue is the start date — the EU ban officially doesn’t apply until December 14, 2027, though the Commission published its enforcement guidelines and risk database last month.
Of course, this gap in the timeline is the strongest part of Washington’s case. While Brussels can point to the law on paper, enforcement has yet to take full effect.
Dutch trade with the US is declining
The US is the Netherlands’ fifth-largest export destination and its second-biggest outside the EU, after the UK. In 2024 alone, 5.7% of Dutch export value crossed the Atlantic, comprising mostly petroleum, chip machines, and medicines.
However, with measures like Trump’s latest round of tariffs on the table, the strength of the two nations’ continued trade remains uncertain. Dutch goods exports to the US dropped 4.7% in the first ten months of 2025, falling every single month from July.
As for whether any of this shows up on your receipt: tariffs are paid by American importers, not you, so the effect on Dutch shelf prices is expected to be minimal at best.
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