Jody Serrano
Editor in chiefEditor in Chief at Xataka On. Before joining Webedia, I was a tech reporter at Gizmodo and The Messenger. While I've covered all sorts of things related to technology, I'm specialized in writing about social media, Internet culture, Twitch, and streamers.
The Trump administration has a message for the world: No country is exempt from tariffs. Yes, even those only populated by penguins.
The penguin tariffs. President Donald Trump’s tariffs are still reverberating around the globe, plunging markets into uncertainty and generating endless questions. However, there’s been perhaps no greater question than the one surrounding Heard and McDonald Islands, a remote island group in the middle of the Antarctic.
Administered by the Australian government as an external territory, both Heard and McDonald Islands were included on Trump’s tariff list. While that might not be too surprising—Australia itself was hit with a 10% tariff—what made these tariffs stand out is the population they affect.
See, no humans live on the islands. There are a lot of penguins, though—specifically, more than 1 million—as well as a “prominent” group of seals.
Memes about Trump's tariffs on Heard and McDonald Islands flooded social media.
Australia’s response. The idea of putting tariffs on an island group with no humans was so outlandish that Australian authorities originally thought they were “clearly a mistake” and the result of a “rushed process,” according to the BBC.
“It just shows and exemplifies the fact that nowhere on Earth is safe from this,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said last week.
Besides Heard and McDonald Islands, two other of Australia’s external territories made it onto Trump’s tariff list: Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands. All four of the islands received a 10% tariff.
Heard and McDonald Islands. Located about 2,400 southwest of Australia, Heard and McDonald Islands stretch out over 140 square miles. They’re home to Australia’s only active volcano and are covered by glaciers.
It takes a seven-day boat trip from Perth to get to the islands, which don’t have any infrastructure to support human habitation, NBC News reported. Not even commercial tour operators offer visits to the islands.
Curiously, the outlet noted that the islands had exported $1.4 million worth of “machinery and electrical goods” to the U.S. in 2022. The U.S., meanwhile, exported $21,600 to the Heard and McDonalds Islands that same year. Exactly how the U.S. and the penguins managed to carry out trade is a mystery, though another report suggests that it was a labeling error.
Yes, it was on purpose. That’s what Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently said when asked whether the tariffs on Heard and McDonald Islands were a mistake. According to Lutnick, the islands were included on the tariff list to keep other countries from avoiding the president’s tariffs.
“What happens is, if you leave anything off the list, the countries that try to basically arbitrage America go through those countries to us,’’ Lutnick said on Face the Nation on Sunday. “Any country. Like, we had tariffs—the president put tariffs on China, right, in 2018—and then what China started doing is they started going through other countries to America.”
When pressed on how the island group could be used this way, especially considering that it last received human visitors roughly 10 years ago, Lutnick insisted that the president was trying to ensure “the end of those loopholes.”
Image | Danielle Barnes
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