Bureau of International Labor Affairs
(ILAB)
Department of LaborInternational child labor and trafficking programs; trade agreement labor enforcement
Summary
The Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) at the Department of Labor runs grant programs that fight child labor, forced labor, and human trafficking overseas and enforces labor rules in U.S. trade agreements. The FY2027 budget proposes cutting ILAB's funding by $46 million, a 40% reduction, shrinking the bureau from roughly $115 million to about $70 million while keeping trade-enforcement work funded at a lower level and scaling back international child labor programs.
Who Is Affected
The cut mainly hits ILAB's overseas grant portfolio, which funds projects run by NGOs and foreign governments to remove children from hazardous work, rehabilitate trafficking survivors, and strengthen labor law enforcement in countries like Peru, Bangladesh, and others where the U.S. has trade agreements. The Department of Labor's own FY2027 budget document shows total ILAB grant funding falling to $38 million, down from a program that awarded roughly $67 million a year for child-labor projects alone just a few years earlier. ILAB staff working on trade-labor enforcement and international standards would also operate with fewer resources, at 101 full-time staff.
What this cut would actually mean
With less grant money, fewer country-level projects to pull children out of mines, farms, and factories would be funded or renewed, meaning some ongoing rehabilitation, schooling, and monitoring programs for at-risk children would end or shrink. ILAB's reduced capacity would also weaken its ability to investigate and document labor abuses in global supply chains, potentially slowing enforcement of labor provisions in trade deals like USMCA and making it harder to catch products made with child or forced labor before they reach U.S. markets. Advocacy groups and some members of Congress have warned that shrinking ILAB weakens the government's main tool for catching trade partners that violate labor commitments.
Sources
- FY 2027 Department of Labor Budget in Brief — The Department of Labor's own budget document showing ILAB's FY2027 request of about $70.2 million, including $38 million in grant funding, and its reoriented focus on trade enforcement.
- International Labor Programs - Federal Grants Wire — Describes ILAB's grant-making history, noting it awarded roughly $67 million in FY2023 for programs combating child labor internationally.
- GAO report on ILAB technical assistance projects — Government Accountability Office review of how ILAB selects and manages child-labor and forced-labor technical assistance grants, including country-level examples like a Peru child labor project.
- DeLauro Speaks Against Trump's Cuts to Labor Department Budget — Congressional reaction describing concerns that reducing ILAB weakens the office responsible for identifying trade-labor violations.
- Bureau of International Labor Affairs — ILAB's own overview of its mission to combat child labor, forced labor, and human trafficking and to enforce labor provisions in U.S. trade agreements.
Administration's Stated Rationale
“International child labor programs reduced; trade agreement labor enforcement maintained at lower level.”