President Donald Trump has always promised to 'make America great again', and while we warned he was going to impose some pretty brutal tariffs, his Liberation Day announcement has left jaws on the floor.
If imposing a 10% tariff on all foreign imports wasn't enough, Donald Trump has levied particularly harsh customized tariffs against China (54%), Vietnam (46%), and the European Union (20%). Mexico and Canada might look like they've come out of this unscathed, but having hit by an earlier 25% tariff, both have already felt the wrath of the POTUS.
Trump has made no bones about his beef with China and the EU, but as reported by Forbes, these tariffs will also hit some of the remotest places on Earth.
The 10% reciprocal tariff is set to strike the Heard and McDonald Islands, which are an external Australian territory just under 1,000 miles to the north of Antarctica.
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An Australian government website refers to the islands as "one of the wildest and remotest places on Earth."
The irony here is that the islands are uninhabited, meaning unless the seals and penguins who live there are planning on exporting anything to the USA, there's little reason to impose the 10% tariff.
It's currently unclear how the Heard and McDonald Islands would be affected, as aside from a small amount of fishing, there's no economic activity. In fact, the only real thing of note here is the Big Ben volcano that stands at 1.7 miles tall on Heard.
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The only way to access the Heard and McDonald Islands is via a two-day boat trip from Perth, with the last visit from humans being a decade ago.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responded to the news and said: "Nowhere on earth is safe."
As Forbes points out, other remote areas are also set to be stung by the tariffs, including the Cocos (Keeling) Islands with a population of less than 600, as well as the Norwegian Arctic islands of Svalbard and Jan Mayen. Again, Jan Mayen has no permanent population.
Also on the list is Norfolk Island that lies 1,600km north-east of Sydney and has a population of just 2,188. Worryingly, Norfolk Island has been levied with a 29% tariff (19% higher than Australia). The Observatory of Economic Complexity data claims that Norfolk Island exported the equivalent of $655,000 worth of goods to the USA in 2023, with $413,000 of that being leather footwear.
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Speaking to Reuters, concrete-mixing owner Richard Cottle explained how he thinks his home Norfolk Island being hit with the 29% tariff was simply a 'mistake': "Norfolk Island is a little dot in the world. We don't export anything."
Fellow resident Guy Duncan added: "Products from Norfolk Island are going to have a 29% tariff? Well, there is no product, so it's not going to have an effect. They probably don't even know where Norfolk Island is in the world. It's just probably an anomaly."
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Albanese concluded: "Norfolk Island has got a 29% tariff. I’m not quite sure that Norfolk Island, with respect to it, is a trade competitor with the giant economy of the United States, but that just shows and exemplifies the fact that nowhere on earth is safe from this."
Bizarrely, these remote areas are implicated by the POTUS as encouraging "currency manipulation and trade barriers." While it could simply be some accounting errors, many are amused that these remote (and sometimes uninhabited) locations are on the radar of the USA.