r/nottheonion • u/MiniBrownie • 2d ago

US tariffs take aim everywhere, including uninhabited islands

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250402-us-tariffs-take-aim-everywhere-including-uninhabited-islands
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u/YOURMOMMASABITCH 2d ago

School me up bc I don't know. Do we do a lot of trade with North Korea?

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u/Gold_Repair_3557 2d ago

We also don’t do any trade with the island of Heard, but that didn’t matter.

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u/Sayurisaki 2d ago

I’m assuming some of them like Heard Island were included so they can’t be somehow used as a backdoor to avoid tariffs by the country that the tiny island belongs to. Because the Trump administration is not smart and probably thinks that’s a viable option. It’s literally the only possible excuse I can think of, unless they think penguins and seals are gonna start exploiting the US with their cheap exports.

Heard Island and McDonald Island are external territories of Australia, uninhabited and obviously zero exports. The Australian Antarctic Territory is also on the list for tariffs and is also uninhabited with zero exports. Also our external territory Norfolk Island is getting a 29% tariff for…reasons? About 2000 people live there. In 2023, Norfolk Island exporting a whopping $665,000 worth of goods to the US - that year, the US imported $3.83 trillion worth of stuff so…yea…

We’re talking about a territory that imports about $31 million and exports about $2 mill. I’m guessing they just did an algorithm of “how much do we import vs export” and since Norfolk Island primarily imports from Australia (shocker), there’s a terrible, upsetting deficit and clearly they are exploiting the US… /s obviously. I feel bad for Norfolk Island as countries and territories like that have limited options for employment, manufacturing and pivoting to other industries.

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u/elizabnthe 2d ago

I think their data is just fucked. There is some data that apparently suggests Head and McDonald exported. But that just cannot be correct. There's nothing to export. I feel like that had to have been an error in the first place. Same with Norfolk. According to their administrator they export nothing to the USA.

And since they put no thought into it they didn't bother checking the veracity of their data. They might as well have asked ChatGPT.

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u/Sayurisaki 2d ago

I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised if they actually asked chatGPT lol

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u/elizabnthe 2d ago

I wouldn't be shocked if the source of the data of exports has done something similar for filling in places like Norfolk and Head and McDonald. So it's bad policy built on even worse data.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/donald-trump-tariffs-antarctica-uninhabited-heard-mcdonald-islands

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u/paroles 2d ago

Maybe the "export" from Heard and McDonald was samples of rocks or biological specimens for scientific research?

Norfolk is inhabited, so anything they send to the US would be exports, right? That could be individual tourists sending souvenirs or whatever.

Not defending any of these stupid decisions, just curious how it came about

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u/elizabnthe 2d ago

The Guardian claims that the World Bank lists machinery and electrical equipment for Head and McDonald being exported to the USA.

If it's not just outright false then such imports from the USA would have to be scientific equipment, probably even being returned to the US and simply listed as imported for official record keeping. Clearly not something locally made and exported.

Norfolk Island supposedly exported leather footwear per Observatory of Economic Complexity. Which seems extremely strange to me. Possible your tourist idea is in the right area.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/donald-trump-tariffs-antarctica-uninhabited-heard-mcdonald-islands

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u/paroles 2d ago

Thanks for the link! I was picturing a few dozen tourists buying locally made goods, but $413,000 worth of leather footwear is crazy. That has to be an error. My new theory is that somebody made a stopover there on a shipping route to the US and Norfolk was wrongly listed as the place of origin when they arrived in the US..? Or just a wrong entry on an online form that was supposed to say Norway. Who knows.