Section 307 Tariff Act

Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (codified at 19 U.S.C. § 1307) prohibits the importation into the United States of any goods "mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part" by convict labor, forced labor, or indentured labor, including forced or indentured child labor. Enforcement falls to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which can issue a Withhold Release Order (WRO) when it has information "reasonably indicating" that covered goods are entering U.S. commerce. Detained shipments may be re-exported, or the importer can attempt to prove the goods were not made with forced labor.

For decades the statute was largely dormant because of the "consumptive demand" loophole, which permitted imports of forced-labor goods if domestic production could not meet U.S. demand. That exception was repealed by the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015, signed by President Obama in February 2016, after which WRO activity expanded sharply.

Section 307 has since become a central tool of U.S. supply-chain and human-rights policy. CBP has issued WROs against goods including Malaysian palm oil (Sime Darby, FGV Holdings), Malaysian rubber gloves (Top Glove, WRP), seafood from specific vessels, and a broad regional WRO covering cotton and tomato products from China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (January 2021).

Section 307 was substantially reinforced by the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), signed December 2021 and effective June 2022, which creates a rebuttable presumption that any goods made wholly or partly in Xinjiang, or by entities on the UFLPA Entity List, are produced with forced labor and therefore barred under Section 307.

For MUN and research purposes, Section 307 is frequently cited as the most operationally significant national forced-labor import ban, often compared with the EU's forced labor regulation adopted in 2024 and Canada's and Mexico's USMCA-related commitments.