US president Donald Trump last week announced a fresh round of tariffs on goods coming from the EU (among dozens of other countries), ostensibly “related to the failure ... to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labour”.

The EU was hit with a 10 per cent tariff on the basis that it “impose[s] a forced labour import prohibition but do[es] not yet effectively enforce it”, whereas countries with no legal prohibition at all face a 12.5 per cent rate. For once, he has a point.

Other writers in these pages, including Jack Power and Cantillon, have pointed out that the months-long investigation by the US Trade Representative into forced labour in US trade partners is mostly a cover for the sort of performative protectionism in which Trump likes to dabble to distract from his foreign and domestic policy blunders. I find it hard to believe that the US administration – which gutted the National Labor Relations Board before appointing a tame chairperson – cares much about workers’ rights. They are using the suspicion of forced labour as a legal basis for tariffs which were struck down as unlawful by the US Supreme Court in February, but temporarily reinstated until last week. There is no reason to think these tariffs are part of a carefully considered strategy to work with unions and NGOs on the ground: this will not be a “Liberation Day” for victims of forced labour. However, the opportunism of Trump’s discovery of forced labour in EU supply chains should not distract us from the fact that, much as we might hate to admit it, he is right. The EU is soft on slave labour.

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