Trump tariffs take aim everywhere, including uninhabited islands
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US President Donald Trump delivers remarks on tariffs at the White House on April 2.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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WASHINGTON - The world’s remotest corners could not hide from US President Donald Trump’s global tariff onslaught
The Australian territory in the sub-Antarctic Indian Ocean was slapped with 10 per cent tariffs on all its exports, despite the icy archipelago having zero residents – other than many seals, penguins and other birds.
“Due to the extreme isolation of Heard Island and McDonald Islands, together with the persistently severe weather and sea conditions, human activities in the region have been, and remain, limited,” an Australian government website explains.
Strings of ocean specks around the globe, including Australia’s Cocos (Keeling) Islands and the Comoros off the coast of Africa, were likewise subjected to 10 per cent new tariffs.
Another eye-catching inclusion in the tariffs list was Myanmar, which is digging out from an earthquake that left nearly 3,000 people dead
Britain’s Falkland Islands – population 3,200 people and around one million penguins – got particular punishment.
The South Atlantic territory – mostly famous for a 1982 war fought by Britain to expel an Argentinian invasion – was walloped with tariffs of 41 per cent on exports to the US.
The Falklands’ would-be ruler Argentina faces only 10 per cent new tariffs.
According to the Falklands Chamber of Commerce, the territory is ranked 173rd in the world in terms of global exports, with only US$306 million (S$410 million) of products exported in 2019. This included US$255 million in exports of mollusks and US$30 million of frozen fish.
Australia puzzled
Another Australian territory hit by the tariffs was tiny Norfolk Island in the Pacific, which was slapped with a 29 per cent tariff.
The island – home to many descendants of the HMS Bounty mutineers – has a total population of a little over 2,000 people and lies 1,600km north-east of Sydney.
Its main industry is tourism.
The island’s chamber of commerce says it ranked as the world’s No. 223rd exporter in 2019, shipping goods worth A$2.7 million (S$2.28 million), led by soybean meal and sowing seeds.
Yet the global tariff list brandished by Mr Trump showed it was being punished with a tariff nearly three times higher than the Australian mainland’s 10 per cent.
“I’m not sure what Norfolk Island’s major exports are to the United States and why it’s been singled out, but it has,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters.
“I’m not quite sure that Norfolk Island, with respect to it, is a trade competitor with the giant economy of the United States,” he added.
It “exemplifies the fact that nowhere on Earth is exempt from this”.
In any case, the Prime Minister could not say why the island would not face the same US tariff as the rest of the country.
“Last time I looked, Norfolk Island was a part of Australia,” he later told public radio ABC, describing it as “somewhat unexpected and a bit strange”. AFP
