Bangladesh will respond to USTR’s forced labour claim

Bangladesh is preparing a formal response to the USTR’s claim that the country has failed to prevent imports of goods made with forced labour, in a bid to avoid a proposed 10 percent tariff on its exports to the United States.

The commerce ministry is currently drafting the response and plans to submit it to the United States Trade Representative (USTR) by July 7, a senior ministry official said on condition of anonymity.

Following an investigation involving 60 economies, including Bangladesh, the USTR last week proposed imposing tariffs of 10 percent and 12.5 percent on exports to the US from economies that failed to demonstrate they do not use raw materials produced through forced labour.

The commerce ministry official said Bangladesh does not import cotton produced through forced labour in China’s Xinjiang province, contrary to the findings cited in the USTR investigation report.

Showkat Aziz Russell, president of the Bangladesh Textile Mills Association, also said local mills, traders and importers do not source cotton from China.

“Therefore, the USTR’s claim does not apply to Bangladesh,” he added.

In its investigation released last week, the USTR found that Bangladesh and 59 other economies had failed to impose and effectively enforce bans on imports of goods made with forced labour, arguing that this was burdening or restricting US commerce.

“The failure of our most important trading partners to address the importation of goods made with forced labour is unacceptable,” said USTR Ambassador Jamieson Greer.

He added that the situation forces American workers to compete globally on an uneven playing field. “We will no longer tolerate this disparity,” he said.

For economies that already have a ban on imports of goods made with forced labour, have agreed under an Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) to introduce and enforce such a ban, or have partial measures in place to restrict some forced-labour goods, the USTR has proposed an additional duty of 10 percent.

Bangladesh has committed under the US-Bangladesh Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) to ban imports of goods made with forced labour and would therefore be subject to the proposed 10 percent tariff.

For all other economies, the USTR has proposed a higher additional duty of 12.5 percent.

The USTR investigation report states that the use of forced labour in cotton production is well documented and that such imports are prohibited under US law. It also notes that some textile manufacturers are included on the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act entity list.

According to the report, 92.8 percent of China’s cotton production in the 2025-26 marketing year originated from Xinjiang province.

It further states that witness testimony showed exports from the region to the 59 other investigated economies totalled $37.6 billion in 2025 and that nearly all of those economies imported cotton from China between 2021 and 2025.