In an era when trade law has become a primary instrument of geopolitical pressure, the Trump administration has once again reached into the archive of American statutes to impose new tariffs — this time invoking forced labour provisions to levy 10 to 12.5 per cent duties on dozens of trading partners. Canada, shielded by USMCA exemptions and energy carve-outs, escapes the worst of this particular measure, though the reprieve is partial and temporary. The deeper story is not any single tariff but the accumulation of overlapping legal frameworks, each with its own authority, its own exemptions,