Officials are scrambling to roll out President Donald Trump’s ever-shifting tariffs on imports from around the world, adding a huge new workload for Customs and Border Protection staff that could hurt the agency’s ability to enforce laws already on the books.
“I can’t even imagine what a strain this is and how fast that they are churning through changes to how they’re doing things,” one former CBP official told NOTUS, requesting anonymity to discuss their past trade enforcement experience. “It’s enormously difficult for CBP to keep up with those updates, keep their field updated and aware of all of the changes and make sure everybody is focusing on doing enforcement.”
Trump’s tariffs not only translate into many new administrative tasks for CBP staff, former trade officials said — just look at all of these recent guidance notes — but they may also incentivize more companies to evade duties.
The former CBP official and a second former CBP official both told NOTUS that the customs officers at ports who inspect shipments for tariff-evasion schemes are the same people scrutinizing shipments under America’s forced labor ban.
“There’s only so much time in the day,” the first former official said of those staff. While the agency’s technology and workforce can adapt over time to the new tariffs, officials right now are “fully engaged in what they’re doing. So if you add more in one area, you have to subtract in another area.”
Trump’s indecision alone is a burden for CBP. He first threatened sweeping tariffs on most countries before scaling those rates back to a smaller flat tariff on most products, paired with 145% duties on most imports from China. Those are in addition to new tariffs on metals from around the globe, tariffs on Canadian and Mexican products and an upcoming change that would subject many small shipments to duties. Each new policy entails updates to CBP’s systems, revised guidance for companies and work to inform customs agents at ports about what enforcement should look like.
On Tuesday night, Trump indicated there would soon be even more uncertainty, saying his previously announced tariffs on China “will come down substantially, but it won’t be zero.”
“145% is very high, and it won’t be that high,” he said.
He has also carved out temporary exceptions for some products, making implementation even more complicated.
As Trump has asked CBP to slap new tariffs on imports from around the world, the agency has also seen a sharp decline in its implementation of a forced labor ban. There could be other reasons for the decline, according to trade experts and former officials, but because the same agents are doing both jobs of enforcement at ports, there may not be enough time or hands to do it all.
CBP halted only about $2 million in shipments suspected of having ties to forced labor for review in March 2025, a sharp drop from $290.7 million in March 2024, according to the latest data. This is the lowest monthly figure since the first week that a landmark forced labor ban went into effect in 2022, and it is part of a monthslong downward trend in the law’s enforcement.
“This is what experts call deprioritization,” a longtime GOP China policy hand, who asked to speak anonymously to be frank, told NOTUS of the latest figures from CBP.
Importers are thinking about how they can sidestep the new tariffs by potentially reclassifying their products, international trade and supply chains expert Owen Haacke wrote on Tuesday.
“They say their competitors are doing it, so they are going to do it too,” Haacke wrote on LinkedIn. (He said he is telling these people not to misclassify their products, and to instead report the importers who are doing it to CBP.) Another method of tariff evasion is known as transshipment, in which companies route goods through a false “country of origin” that has a lower tariff rate before sending them to the United States.
A CBP spokesperson didn’t answer directly when asked by NOTUS earlier this month if the new tariffs are affecting forced labor prevention. The spokesperson said that “CBP has become a global leader in forced labor enforcement, and the agency’s efforts serve as a global catalyst for actions.”
The agency told NOTUS in a statement after this story’s publication that “robust forced labor enforcement continues to be a top priority for CBP. Forced labor is an unfair trade practice that undermines the ability of U.S. companies to compete fairly in the global economy.”
When asked, the spokesperson didn’t clarify if any of CBP’s dedicated forced labor staff at the agency’s headquarters have been diverted to tariff-related work.
The transition hasn’t been seamless. A glitch in the CBP system that companies use to inform officials of products en route recently disrupted some imports. And each time Trump changes his mind, companies and customs officials are starting from scratch.
Trump, meanwhile, has high hopes for trade negotiations with China.
“I think we’re going to live together very happily and ideally work together, so I think it’s going to work out very well,” he said on Tuesday.
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Haley Byrd Wilt is a reporter at NOTUS.