President Trump's Tariffs Require Human Rights Guardrails

Todd Howland is the Interim Director of the Environmental Justice Clinic and Visiting Professor of Law at Vermont Law and Graduate School, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at the New School. As a former senior UN official, Howland served as the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Representative in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Angola, among other posts.

He authored about 30 scholarly articles on human rights, including those published in the Human Rights Quarterly, the Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, and the Virginia Journal of International Law. He also published 80 commentaries on human rights in newspapers and magazines, including in the Washington Post, LA Times, the Toronto Globe and Mail, and Revista Semana. He was recently published in the Oxford Human Rights Hub and Open Global Rights.

Human rights law empowers individuals to challenge powerful actors (state and non-state) when those actors exercise power without consideration of the impact on the rights of others.

Globally, including in the U.S., individuals have the right to participate in decisions that affect their livelihoods, health, education, and other aspects of their lives. President Trump’s tariffs appear to be implemented without considering these rights.

Consider a flower industry worker in Colombia. A sudden tariff of 10%, 25%, or 50% could devastate their business and the communities depending on it. Similar harms can occur across industries. Tariffs do not inherently violate human rights law, but governments must assess and mitigate their potential impacts.

Trump’s tariffs—whether the original, paused, revised, or rejected by the courts—      exceeded his authority under both domestic and international law and harmed lives globally. Ironically, this overreach may catalyze a renewed embrace of international law, especially human rights law in economic governance. It could mark the end of the notion that trade and business operate independently of human rights protections.

This article argues that human rights law already applies to tariffs and that the international community must use these laws to protect individuals everywhere—including within the U.S— from their harmful effects.

Abuse of Authority Under U.S. Law

Under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, only Congress, not the President, has the authority to tax. Tariffs are a tax.

While Congress authorized the president to adjust tariffs for specific economic policies, these powers come with numerous restrictions.

President Trump argues he has emergency powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs. This argument is pending at the U.S. Supreme Court. President Trump lost this argument in the U.S. Court of International Trade, in an alternative case at the U.S. District Court, and in a consolidated case at the U.S. Federal Appeals Court. The courts all found that President Trump’s use of the IEEPA to impose sweeping tariffs exceeded his authority, as the statute does not grant the president broad taxation powers without congressional approval.

Some members of Congress attempted, albeit cautiously, to rein in this overreach through proposed legislation, and the Senate has twice voted to repeal Trump-imposed tariffs, once related to Canada and another time related to Brazil, but neither bill moved forward in the House of Representatives.   

Violations of International Law

Trump’s unilateral tariff actions also violate the spirit and letter of the United Nations Charter, which remains binding on the U.S., despite his administration’s hostility toward international law.

Article 1(3) of the UN Charter outlines the UN’s purpose: to foster international cooperation in solving economic, social, and humanitarian problems, and to promote respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Although tariffs themselves may not inherently conflict with these goals, Trump’s arbitrary and unilateral approach—disregarding the rights of affected individuals—does.

Article 2(4) of the Charter prohibits the use of force or coercion in international relations in ways inconsistent with the UN’s purposes. Although some Western states resisted defining economic coercion as force, few would deny that Trump’s tariffs contradict the Charter’s principles.

This evolving argument—that economic actions must comply with human rights law—is gaining traction, particularly through human rights law’s treatment of sanctions and unilateral coercive measures. This same logic can be applied to unilateral and arbitrary use of tariffs.

Sanctions and Unilateral Coercive Measures

The UN Human Rights Council has long expressed concern over broad sanctions and coercive measures, citing their severe impact on rights such as health, education, food, and housing. In its latest resolution on the topic from April 2025, the Council reaffirmed the principles of sovereign equality, non-intervention, and freedom of trade—core tenets of international law.

In paragraph 6 of the recent resolution, the Human Rights Council condemned “the continued unilateral application and enforcement by certain powers of such measures as tools of pressure.” This resolution also condemned “political and economic pressure, against any country, particularly against least developed and developing countries, with a view to preventing these countries from exercising their right to decide, of their own free will, their own political, economic and social systems.”

General Comment 8 from the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights emphasized how sanctions undermine individuals’ ability to work and live.

Experts have highlighted the suffering caused by sanctions—disrupting economies, suffocating trade, and destroying productive systems. In 2021 and again in 2023, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for critical re-evaluation, stressing that sanctions must comply with international law, include fair processes, and be subject to review and remedy. They must also be time-limited and monitored through independent human rights assessments.

The Office of the High Commissioner is currently preparing a report detailing how economic sanctions and unilateral coercive measures can violate member states’ human rights obligations.

Human Rights and the Need for Guardrails on Tariffs

Human rights law is a distinct branch of international law that protects citizens and non-citizens from powerful entities, including states and businesses. For every right, human rights law provides a remedy. However, there are many challenges to obtaining a remedy for transboundary human rights violations. Whether through sanctions or tariffs, economic measures should be regularly reviewed for their human rights impacts.

Tariffs can cause serious harm to human rights across multiple countries. The Colombian flower grower mentioned earlier may lack standing in U.S. courts to challenge the tariffs, but there is a violation of their right to livelihood and other associated rights. Because human rights law includes the right to remedy, such cases may eventually reach UN Special Rapporteurs, treaty bodies, regional commissions, and courts.

Viewing President Trump’s tariffs through a human rights lens is novel, but necessary. For too long, the human rights movement justified the neoliberal practice of imposing costs on individuals not directly engaged in the economic transaction. This separation of human rights and economic policy allowed environmental degradation and other rights violations to persist in the name of profit and GDP growth. The selective application of human rights weakened their ability to protect core rights like health and life.

While many critiques focus on how Trump’s tariffs violate World Trade Organization (WTO) norms, the WTO’s attempt to construct silos to keep human rights away from economic governance undermined both its legitimacy and the broader human rights framework. Over time, this disconnect will erode the WTO’s relevance.

In response, social movements increasingly used economic rights to challenge market-driven violations and the concentration of political and economic power. The Human Rights Economy initiative seeks to correct this historic blind spot by applying human rights law to confront economic practices that harm individuals and communities.  Human Rights Economy can be expressed in ten pathways, including centring human rights in economic policies, regulations, and business operations. A practical example of this is human rights budgeting in various countries, including in Kenya.

If the U.S. government respected human rights in its trade policy, it would establish guardrails to prevent collateral damage. Consider Costa Rica, which spends 12.5% of public expenditures on education and relies on the U.S. for nearly half its exports. A 10% tariff could significantly reduce revenue, threatening education and other essential services.

Some scholars argue that human rights law does not apply extraterritorially, but other scholars increasingly see this view as outdated. Developments in environmental and climate litigation show how human rights law can—and must—constrain harmful actions by governments and corporations in a globalized world.

Conclusion

International law, and human rights law in particular, remains a vital tool to check abuses of power. President Trump’s use of tariffs without regard for their human impact violates these principles. Even without legal standing in U.S. courts, global consumers can use their purchasing power to send a message.

President Trump seems to forget that the U.S. represents just 4.23% of the global population. While it has the largest economy, the combined economies of the rest of the world far surpass it. By acting unilaterally, the U.S. risks backlash—legal, economic, and moral—that could ultimately strengthen human rights protections and accelerate the rise of a Human Rights Economy.