Trump Trade Chief Greer Accused Twenty Five Democrat States Of Protecting Chinese Sweatshops

Twenty five Democrat states sued Trump to keep tariffs on slave-made goods from falling.

Trump's trade chief fired back with a statement that named names and did not hold back.

What Jamieson Greer said next put every one of those Democrat leaders on the same side as Beijing.

Twenty Five States Sue To Protect Forced Labor Imports

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is not a man who minces words, and he did not start now.

Greer accused the Democrat-run states challenging Trump's forced-labor tariffs of picking foreign sweatshops over the American worker, plain and simple: twenty-five Democrat-run states, stretching from Michigan to California, have made foreign sweatshops their priority over hardworking Americans.

That is not spin. That is the plain reading of a lawsuit filed in the U.S. Court of International Trade.

New York led a coalition of 25 states suing to strike down tariffs of 10 to 12.5 percent covering 60 trading partners and 99.4 percent of all U.S. imports.

Those tariffs were not random. They were imposed after Greer's office investigated which countries let forced labor taint their supply chains.

Countries that banned slave-made imports got the lighter 10 percent rate. Countries that looked the other way got hit with 12.5 percent.

New York Attorney General Letitia James called it an illegal tax hike, framing Trump as simply recycling tariffs the Supreme Court already struck down.

Greer was not buying it, and he made sure everyone knew exactly whose side these Democrat officials were standing on.

His agency is making countries pay a price for tolerating slave-made goods, and these Democrat states are trying to hand that price tag right back to the offenders, free of charge.

The Policy Is Already Working, And Democrats Want To Kill It

Here is what the lawsuit conveniently leaves out: this crackdown is already changing behavior overseas.

Ten countries have signed bilateral deals with the U.S. promising to ban forced-labor imports outright.

Nine more countries adopted their own bans since Greer's investigation opened its doors.

India got moved down from the harsher 12.5 percent tier to 10 percent after it passed a real law against forced-labor imports.

That is not theater. That is sovereign governments changing their laws because Trump made it expensive not to.

Greer summed up the stakes in one line that should end the debate for any fair-minded American: America is the only country that actually enforces a ban on forced-labor imports.

He noted the administration had already taken action against companies in Jordan, Serbia, and China over forced labor abuses in their supply chains.

Even Labor Unions Are Siding With Trump Over Their Own Party

This is the part that should make every union member in a blue state stop and take notice.

The AFL-CIO, the United Steelworkers, the International Association of Machinists, and the United Auto Workers have all backed the administration's forced-labor investigations.

Unions that spent decades fighting for American manufacturing jobs are now more aligned with Trump than with the Democrat attorneys general suing to gut his tariffs.

Greer did not let that irony slide by quietly. Democrats used to be united on stamping out forced labor everywhere it hid, he said, and now their leaders are running interference for the very countries that still allow it.

What happened, indeed. It is worth remembering that Congress banned forced-labor imports from China's Uyghur region back in 2021 by a vote of 428 to 1 in the House, with Democrats fully on board.

That was not controversial then. Somehow, going after forced labor everywhere else has suddenly become a lawsuit-worthy offense once Trump is the one doing it.

The legal fight will turn on how much deference the Court of International Trade gives Greer's agency, since Section 301 tariffs have a much stronger legal foundation than the emergency powers claim the Supreme Court already rejected.

But the politics here are not complicated. Twenty five Democrat-run states went to court to protect the flow of sweatshop goods into America, and their own union allies did not follow them.

Greer put it best when he closed his statement with a simple gut check for these twenty-five state governments.

"Some can still tell wrong from right," Greer said.

Sources:

• John Carney, "Exclusive: Greer Blasts Democrat State Attorneys General For Choosing Foreign Sweatshops Over American Workers," Breitbart, August 5, 2026.
• Cris Tolomia, "25 states sue Trump over Section 301 forced-labor tariffs," Yahoo Finance, August 4, 2026.
• "States File Third Section 301 Tariff Lawsuit, Using Officials' Own Words Against USTR," Tech Times, August 4, 2026.
• "25 states sue Trump over Section 301 forced-labor tariffs," Supply Chain Dive, August 4, 2026.
• "The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Goes into Effect," CSIS, November 4, 2025.