In the long arc of trade diplomacy, few accusations carry more moral weight than forced labour — and this week, the United States wielded that charge as both ethical indictment and economic instrument, placing Singapore among 45 nations subject to new 12.5 percent tariffs. The action, rooted in a four-month investigation by the US Trade Representative and anchored to a 1974 trade statute now stretched far beyond its original design, arrives as Washington scrambles to rebuild a tariff architecture that its own courts have repeatedly dismantled. Singapore, a city-state whose prosperity has long