US: In a bizarre twist in Donald Trump’s latest tariff offensive, a group of uninhabited, glacier-covered volcanic islands near Antarctica has been swept up in the crossfire.
Heard Island and McDonald Islands-remote Australian territories home to penguins but no people have been slapped with a 10 percent tariff on goods, despite no apparent trade activity with the US.
The islands, among the most isolated places on Earth, can only be reached after a grueling two-week boat journey from Perth, Western Australia. Yet, they featured on a White House list of ‘countries’ subject to new trade tariffs.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reacted with bewilderment, remarking, “Nowhere on Earth is safe.”
Heard and McDonald Islands are part of a peculiar group of external Australian territories listed separately from mainland Australia in the tariff plan.
Others include Christmas Island, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, and Norfolk Island, the latter being hit with a staggering 29 percent tariff- 19 percentage points higher than the rest of Australia.
With a population of just over 2,000, Norfolk Island is hardly a trade powerhouse. Yet, according to US trade data, it exported over $655,000 worth of goods to America in 2023, primarily leather footwear.
Even more puzzling is the supposed trade activity from Heard Island and McDonald Islands. The World Bank reports that the US imported $1.4 million worth of machinery and electrical goods from the islands in 2022-despite them having no permanent structures, no industry, and no human residents.
Over the previous five years, imports from these frozen territories ranged from $15,000 to $325,000 per year. How exactly machinery and electrical goods made their way from an empty Antarctic island to the US remains an open question.
