NEW DELHI: India has listed several flaws in the way the US has launched and conducted an investigation into the alleged forced-labour content from imports in Indian merchandise shipped to that country. It also suggested bilateral dialogue to address any specific concern of the US in this regard.
In its formal response to the Report in Section 301 investigations on imports of goods with forced labour that has proposed 12.5% additional tariffs on India, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry has said the office of US Trade Representative (USTR) has issued a sweeping, generalized determination across 60 economies without performing an economy-specific, or product-specific analysis of India’s actual laws and practices.
The probe by USTR covered 60 economies including the European Union (EU). In its submission India has also sought reconsideration of the additional tariffs.
Apart from labor related investigation, the USTR is conducting another probe against India, the European Union, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Mexico and Japan.
This probe is investigating policies of these countries that enable excess manufacturing capacities which then undermine the US industrial base and invite another bout of additional tariffs.
This is an attempt by the US to rebuild the tariff architecture that was brought with the US Supreme Court verdict on reciprocal tariffs. In the negotiations on trade agreement, India and US the issue of Section 301 is also being discussed.
The public hearing on the ‘forced labour’ report starts on Tuesday and the Indian government and industry would be stating their case in a public hearing on Wednesday.
India has submitted that the USTR has not satisfied the relevant legal standard under Section 301(d) of the Trade Act in determining that India’s act, policy or practice relating to importation of goods is unreasonable. This is against the Section 301 provisions that targeted specific state laws, policies, or documented violations.
The USTR also does not provide any fact intensive, or country or product specific evidence in the present investigation. It merely refers to case studies in select sectors for a handful of countries and relies on broad pattern of trade data,
The USTR determination also does not establish a sufficient causal link between the absence of forced labor import prohibitions and its impact on US commerce.
The report had listed rice, cotton and tobacco among commodities where the use of forced labour had hurt American exports. India in its response has pointed out that the US remains one of the few countries from which India imports rice. On cotton it said US cotton exports to India increased from $ 213 million in 2021 to $ 392 million in 2025, over the same period that China’s cotton exports to India fell from $160 million to $109 million.
The rising US market share in cotton alongside declining third-country competition demonstrates that India’s conduct is not affecting US commerce,” India has said.
India also said that it actively addresses the issue of forced labour through domestic constitutional protections, criminal codes and labour laws.
Frameworks like the National Guidelines on Responsible Business Conduct (NGRBC) and SEBI’s Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR) mandate transparency and supply chain due diligence, which are recognized by the International Labour Organization (ILO) as instrumental tools.
The USTR exempted approximately 1,600 items from the proposed tariffs, including agricultural commodities like coffee, vanilla, and cocoa. India has argued that this is highly contradictory since the US Department of Labor’s own list explicitly flags these products for forced labor concerns. Mechanisms like the “textile mechanism”—which reduces tariffs based on how many US-origin inputs a foreign manufacturer buys—operate as arbitrary constraints to protect domestic US producers rather than genuinely addressing forced labour.
Source: The Financial Express
