Trade & Human Rights
We work to ensure Trade Mechanisms advance human rights protections
For too long, corporations that make billions in profits from exploitation of workers and the environment have benefited from access to international trade, leading to adverse human rights impacts and increased inequality.
The United States is one of the world’s biggest importers of goods that are high risk for being made through forced labor. Although there are laws in place that prevent goods made using forced labor from entering U.S. markets, enforcement has been sporadic. An alternate regime is needed that truly places human rights at the core of rules granting access to U.S. trade.
We advocate for strengthening existing trade rules to increase transparency into import supply chains and enforcement against abuses in those supply chains. As an industry at high risk for labor and environmental abuses, the seafood industry provides many opportunities for improving rights protections in U.S. trade.
Updates & Analysis
(June 8, 2026 | Washington, DC) On June 2nd, the US government announced the completion of the Section 301 investigation, imposing a 10% tariff on economies that have imposed full or partial forced labor import bans or have committed to doing so, and a 12.5% tariff on all others.
Although ICAR welcomes the U.S. government leveraging its trade authority to pressure states into taking more concrete action to combat forced labor, a blanket tariff applied across all investigated economies is not the correct approach.
On October 30th, ICAR, Humanity United Action, and the Human Trafficking Legal Center (HTLC) submitted a comment to the U.S. Trade Representative in response to the request for comments on significant foreign trade barriers for the 2026 National Trade Estimate Report.
On Thursday, November 14, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced an Action Plan for enhancing the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP). The Action Plan provides a comprehensive set of goals and actions, including actions that would incorporate labor rights considerations into SIMP.
Our joint letter provides concrete recommendations on addressing illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and forced labor in seafood supply chains and lays out why these efforts are needed to reduce the risks to fisheries as well as the workers and local communities that depend on them.
Today, ICAR and several partners sent a letter to the members of the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC), which is a committee made up of executives from 20 companies that advises U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on ways to streamline trade regulations.
ICAR and HUA comment to express support for the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) proposal to amend the definition of illegal, unreported, or unregulated (IUU) fishing to include fishing activities beyond national jurisdiction that involve the use of forced labor.
ICAR Applauds the Biden Administration’s Statement on Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing and Forced Labor While Encouraging Broader Data Collection and Analysis
To support enforcement of Section 307 of the Tariff Act and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), ICAR urges the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force (FLETF) to require companies that import goods into the United States to accurately trace their supply chains for those goods and report comprehensive supply chain information to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as a condition of entry.
A new report by the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR) and Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) finds that leveraging existing conservation tools to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing increases the U.S. government’s ability to stop goods produced by forced labor from entering our ports.
Sanctions represent an essential part of the U.S. foreign policy toolkit, yet human rights practitioners and advocates often lack the essential understanding of how they work.
The International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR) is pleased to announce the release of its new report “Tools of Trade: The Use of U.S. Generalized System of Preferences to Promote Labor Rights for All.”
The Rohingya, an ethnic minority in Burma, have been subject to decades of abuse and persecution by the Burmese military following the country’s independence in 1948. Over the last five years, this military-driven oppression and violence has intensified.
Corporate influence over the global trade and investment regime has resulted in trade and investment policy, agreements, and enforcement structures that favor corporate interests at the expense of human rights and environmental protections. Recently, new political challenges to global trade and investment have emerged, and States have started re-thinking alternatives to the existing framework.