Immigrant children and labor exploitation
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I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. A 3,500% tariff is an import duty 35 times higher than the item itself. That's the high end of tariffs just announced on key components for solar panels imported from some Southeast Asian countries. Here's Marketplace's Nova Safo.

The Commerce Department announced new tariffs after a year-long illegal dumping investigation dating back to the Biden administration. If finalized, they'd be imposed on solar cells, usually a few inches in size, which are assembled into panels. And those are the things that go on the roofs of people's homes, for example.

American manufacturers filed a complaint that China was circumventing previous tariffs by producing cells in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia and then importing them into the U.S. below cost. It is this kind of circumvention of trade restrictions that the Trump administration has cited as a reason we need global tariffs.

But with the new import duties, American solar panel manufacturers could face higher prices for cells, making their panels more expensive. I'm Novosafo for Marketplace. Now to DHL, the package delivery service that says it's overburdened by new U.S. rules at the border. The Germany-based firm has stopped delivering boxes to U.S. consumers if what's in the box is worth more than $800. Business customers will still get shipments. Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes has that.

The expanded customs requirements DHL says it's dealing with mean a lot more paperwork and documentation, according to Bloomberg analyst Lee Klaskow. And that, he says, slows things down. He compares it to more people having to go through the slow lane at airport security.

You've got to take your shoes off. You've got to take your liquids out. That's kind of what's happening now. There's just more scrutiny. Klaskow says that extra scrutiny has come along with the new tariffs, and it's overwhelmed DHL, which is why it's imposing the temporary suspension. Klaskow says it's possible some shipments will be delayed, though he doesn't expect anything major. And he says this is an example of how complicated it is to work in global shipping right now.

Because this is showing you how much supply chains are having to change. And it's sometimes not very easy to react on a dime. It's possible we'll see other logistics companies make similar moves, says Jason Miller, a professor of supply chain management at Michigan State. The more uncertainty there is, the more value there is in hitting the pause button. And so it seems very likely there'll be a lot of pause buttons being hit.

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The Department of Health and Human Services has stopped the flow of money designated by Congress to protect immigrant children from exploitation. Layoffs have hit legal aid groups across the country that help the tens of thousands of kids who cross the U.S.-Mexico border by themselves, young people especially vulnerable to, for instance, forced labor once inside the U.S. Marketplace's Elizabeth Troval has that.

A 19-year-old Sofia has a soft spot for animals. She pulls out her phone to show me a tiny kitten she rescued at the beach near Galveston. She found him so young, his eyes were still closed. The beach is one of Sofia's favorite places since she moved to the U.S. five years ago. She traveled here alone with her younger brother.

At the time, she was eager to attend high school. But her guardian in Houston, a family member, told her she had to work instead. So he said, you're not going to study. You're going to work. Sofia says all her wages went to her guardian to pay rent. We're not using her real name because of her open immigration case.

Sofia worked long hours at fast food jobs where she'd break down and cry because she wanted to be studying. But Sofia had a secret weapon, her legal team. She had been connected to them through a federally funded program for unaccompanied minors. When she told them she was being forced to work, they said, You have the right to go to school.

And with the legal team's help, Sofia got to finish high school. Today, she's got her own apartment, a retail job, and she says one day she'd like to be a vet or a teacher. Now, the program that helped protect Sofia is ending. The funding supported 26,000 unaccompanied minors with their immigration cases.

For now, the Galveston Houston Immigrant Representation Project will stick with Sophia's case because of other funding streams. But they are cutting staff. Alexis Sandukas heads up the Immigrant Children Program. This loss of funding was almost 50 percent of our organizational budget, and it's almost half of our staff. While she says it's hard to see attorneys lose their jobs…

They're mostly concerned for the children. Her group represents some 300 clients who came to the U.S. as children without a parent or sponsor. We don't intend to withdraw from our cases, but other organizations are. And we're also thinking of all the hundreds of thousands of other children that are not going to receive legal services because of this termination of funding.

Without legal advocates, University of Arizona's Shefali Milchar Desai worries that already at-risk kids are even more exposed to trafficking and exploitation. I haven't seen any evidence that the insatiable demand that America has for low-wage labor has disappeared.

She says industries will keep seeking cheap child labor. So with this funding going away? Exploitation will continue and be worse because there won't be anyone providing legal information and assistance to these children. Legal groups have sued to bring back this congressionally approved funding. For now, a bare-bones legal orientation program remains, and only for a short time.

HHS didn't respond to a request for comment on this story. I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace. And stock in the Danish drugs company Novo Nordisk is down 7.2 percent right now after word came late last week that a U.S. rival, Eli Lilly, has made progress on a weight loss drug that would be taken as a pill with no injections to the tummy. The stock market moves did not register until today since European markets were closed for Easter Monday.

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