Wednesday, June 3, 2026 from Ceramic Tile Distributors Association (CTDA)

PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL: ATTORNEY-CLIENT COMMUNICATIONS: CTDA MEMBER UPDATE ON TRADE ISSUES RELEVANT TO THE CERAMIC TILE INDUSTRY

We wanted to bring to your attention two seemingly conflicting developments regarding US tariffs on products from India.

First, the US Trade Representative announced his findings in the Section 301 case against multiple countries for failing to maintain standards enforcing global bans on the use of forced labor. Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 may be used to respond to unjustifiable, unreasonable, or discriminatory foreign government acts, policies, or practices that burden or restrict U.S. commerce. The USTR has proposed that India, along with 53 other countries, including the UK, have failed to provide and enforce adequate safeguards on the use of forced labor and will tentatively be subject to an additional 12.5 percent tariff on most of its products imported into the United States. This action is proposed and is subject to public comment and hearings in July. In this regard, it must be noted that the European Union was found to have adopted proper forced labor safeguards but to have not enforced them, so EU products will be tentatively hit with a 10 percent additional US tariff. This action is also in the proposal stage and will be subject to public comments, hearings and further agency review.

These announcements by the USTR follow on the heels of its decision earlier yesterday proposing the imposition of an additional 25 percent US tariff on most products imported into the US from Brazil. This tentative decision by the USTR will also be subject to public comment and hearings.

Second, seemingly in contrast to the USTR’s announcement, US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor this morning announced that the US and India have completed 99 percent of a bilateral trade and tariff deal with the remaining one percent of issues to be addressed in the coming weeks. Were this deal to be finalized, we suspect that the 12.5 percent additional “forced labor” US tariff on Indian goods would be subsumed by it.

There is another ongoing Section 301 case targeting multiple countries whose results are expected sometime in July. It alleges “excess productive capacity” in the listed nations, including the EU and India. We believe this is underway to help finalize tariff agreements with those countries.

The EU Parliament committee voted yesterday to approve the bilateral EU/US tariff agreement that was negotiated in August of last year. Trump has threatened that unless he obtains a signed agreement by July 4th, he will impose additional US tariffs on the EU.

In short, we expect that both tariff deals with India and the EU will be settled by next month as we suspect Trump wants to show some stability in world commerce before the midterms. In contrast, things that seem definite have a way of changing overnight, so nothing is certain.

CTDA will continue to monitor these issues and will likely submit comments when the comment periods for these issues have been determined.

Should you have any questions regarding this member alert, please contact CTDA Legal Counsel at the following telephone number and email address:

Robin Grover
Law Office of Robin W. Grover
Washington, D.C.
Tel. No.: 202-302-1653
[email protected]
www.GroTradelaw.com