(Gray News) – Two tiny, remote Antarctic islands where only penguins and seals live have been hit with a 10% tariff from President Donald Trump.
Heard Island and McDonald Islands were subject to Trump’s sweeping tariffs.
The islands are among the remotest places on the planet, accessible only by a two-week boat voyage from Perth, Australia.
The Guardian reports that the islands are completely uninhabited, with the last visit from people believed to be nearly 10 years ago in 2016.
The islands were listed by the Trump administration as a territory that would see a 10% tariff imposed on its goods.
In response, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Thursday, “Nowhere on Earth is safe.”
BBC reports that Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell said that the tariffs were “clearly a mistake.”
“Poor old penguins, I don’t know what they did to Trump, but, look, I think it’s an indication, to be honest with you, that this was a rushed process,” Farrell said.
In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins was asked why tariffs were imposed on the remote islands.
“Well, I mean that come on, Jake, obviously here’s the bottom line – we live under a tariff regime from other countries,” Rollins said.
When Tapper said the remote Antarctic islands were not imposing tariffs, Rollins responded, “I mean, come on, whatever. Listen, the people that are leading this are serious, intentional, patriotic, the smartest people I’ve ever worked with.”
The Guardian said that data from the World Bank shows the remote islands have exported a small amount of goods to the U.S. in past years, nearly all of it unnamed “machinery and electrical” products.
However, reports say those shipments were wrongly labelled as coming from those islands, rather than their actual places of origin.
In an interview with CBS, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick defended the decision to impose tariffs on the uninhabited islands.
He said that the tariff was put in place to close “ridiculous loopholes” that would prevent other countries from shipping through the islands to reach the United States.
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