Seven economies adopted forced-labor import rules after the tariff was proposed, and the grace period for goods already at sea closes at 12:01 on Tuesday

Seven.

That is how many economies changed their position on forced-labor imports between the day the United States proposed these tariffs and the day it imposed them. The Office of the United States Trade Representative filed its notice of action on Monday for publication on Tuesday, and the sequence is written into it.

Six of them imposed forced-labor import prohibitions after the proposed action was published on June 5: Cambodia, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Sri Lanka and Trinidad and Tobago. Jordan took on commitments through an Agreement on Reciprocal Trade. The notice records those moves as following government-to-government consultations under Section 303 of the Trade Act and the June 5 publication, and it does not say more than that about why they happened.

What it does say is what the two rates are for. Ten percent applies to an economy that imposes a forced-labor import prohibition, has committed to impose and enforce one through an Agreement on Reciprocal Trade, or has a partial regime with the effect of keeping certain forced-labor goods out. Everything else is 12.5 percent. All seven of the economies that moved are in the 10 percent group, alongside Argentina, Bangladesh, Canada, Ecuador, El Salvador, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan and the United Kingdom.

Five economies are capped rather than charged a flat rate. For a product of the European Union or Taiwan, the Section 301 duty is set so that it and the most-favored-nation duty together reach 10 percent, and where the most-favored-nation rate already reaches 10 percent the Section 301 duty is zero. Japan, Korea and Switzerland get the same arithmetic at 12.5 percent.

The proceeding itself was not small. USTR opened the 60 investigations on March 12 and published its findings and a report on June 2, dividing the economies into 54 that had failed both to impose and to enforce a prohibition and six, being Canada, Ecuador, the European Union, Indonesia, Mexico and Pakistan, that had failed only on enforcement. More than 1,600 written comments came in. A three-day hearing on July 7, 8 and 9 heard from more than 100 witnesses, including representatives of the governments under investigation, industry associations, domestic producers and non-governmental organizations.

The textile mechanism is still a promise. The notice directs tariff-rate quotas for Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia and Malaysia, with an initial duration of three years, sized on each economy's purchases of United States cotton and textile inputs, and it says they will be established when the Trade Representative determines that doing so is feasible. Until then the 10 percent applies to the apparel they would have covered. No effective date is set.

One deadline is immediate. The duties applied from 12:01 a.m. eastern time on July 24, with a carve-out for goods already loaded and in transit on their final leg before that moment. That carve-out expires when those goods are entered for consumption or withdrawn from warehouse after 12:01 a.m. eastern time on July 28.