Continued from June 2025 blog: Department of Labor Terminates Grants that Fight International Human Trafficking, Promote Labor Rights
The ILAB grants now being terminated provide funding to support nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations to combat child labor, forced labor, and human trafficking on the ground around the world. The agency also monitors labor rights abuses in global supply chains, which protects American jobs and workers back home by deterring unfair competition from imports produced by companies using exploited workers and forced labor. Production of goods and services abroad by using workers who can be trapped in warehouses, kidnapped across borders, forced to work without pay under threat of violence, or disappeared for exercising fundamental rights to free association and collective bargaining in unions also drives down wages and working conditions for U.S. employees that face unfair competition from exports and employer threats to offshore work.
Cuts to ILAB grants also come on the heels of cuts to offices at the U.S. Department of State that focus on international human rights, including labor rights, and the Trump administration’s attempt to withhold appropriated federal funds from the National Endowment for Democracy, which funds the work of the Solidarity Center to promote worker rights internationally.
Impact: Cutting ILAB grants leaves vulnerable workers around the world at risk without access to ILAB-funded programs, undermines our ability to monitor foreign governments’ compliance with U.S. trade agreements, and ensures that U.S. workers will compete on an uneven international playing field fueling a race to the bottom in the global economy.