No man is an island. Then again, no man is quite like President Trump. From the penguins of the Antarctic to the grazing sheep on the Falklands, hardly a corner of the world has been left untouched by the tariffs announced with great fanfare in the White House Rose Garden.
Today, however, there is growing bemusement at many of the inclusions, and suspicions that some of the remotest corners may have been hit with little thought.
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Heard and McDonald Islands
It’s unlikely that many people have heard much about the Heard and McDonalds, but that may be about to change. The sub-Antarctic territory of Australia, population at last count not a soul, was hit with relatively modest tariffs of 10 per cent. Still, given that it’s 2,500 miles from the Australian mainland, had no trade with the US last year and is home only to birds, penguins, a colony of seals and a volcano or two, the assault was unexpected.
Occasionally it does get visitors, but these are science teams arriving to peer at wildlife, not export goods. Described by Unesco as one of the “world’s rare pristine island ecosystems”, and a world heritage site since 1997, the islands’ inclusion can, in part, be explained by being part of Australia’s “external territories”, effectively part of the mainland and not enjoying self-governance, even if they had a person to govern.
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Sir Simon Schama, the British historian, appeared to sum it up. “Bit hard on the penguins though to have their guano tariffed,” he wrote on X. Other Australian territories included on Trump’s list were the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Christmas Island and Norfolk Island.
Norfolk Island
If you asked every single one of the 2,188 people who live on Norfolk Island, they might be as puzzled as Anthony Albanese, the Australian prime minister, about its inclusion. Quite why it fared worse than those living 1,000 miles away and was hit with 29 per cent tariffs, compared with Australia’s 10 per cent, is for the moment unexplained.
For his part, Albanese was dumbstruck by an economic attack on what was once a British penal colony known as “hell in the Pacific”. He said: “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, on the table. Nowhere on earth is safe.”
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Tourism is its main industry, but the overwhelming majority of visitors are Australians who travel for its beaches and pine forests. According to the latest estimates, the value of imports by the US from the islands totalled $200,000 last year, less than Trump’s salary.
When Norfolk Island does export things, they are usually shoes — leather shoes in particular — and none go to the US. Jesse Schiller and Rachel Evans, who live there, told The Sydney Morning Herald there could be an upside to all this in the form of more tourism. “We are in the middle of the ocean — there’s no economic sense to having a manufacturing industry here,” Schiller said. “I think it’s certainly just entertainment at this point. If anything we’re going to be getting press in general, [it] is a good thing.”
American whalers of the 1800s made frequent stops there during their years-long voyages around the Pacific Ocean and many stayed to start families. Many on the island still celebrate Thanksgiving. “Have the Americans just got confused?” asked the island’s representative in Australia’s parliament, David Smith.
Falkland Islands
They celebrate “liberation day” on the Falklands, too. But it’s more to do with 1982 and all that. On Thursday — only 24 hours after Argentina celebrated its own version of “Las Malvinas day”, when the nation takes a few hours to recall that it still wants to reclaim the windswept rock in the South Atlantic — locals awoke to an assault they did not expect, though maybe should have seen coming.
Trump hates trade imbalances and on the windswept hills around Port Stanley you could imagine his roar at the raw deal America was getting. In many ways, the Falklands have been having it too good for too long, if you overlook the isolation, blighted weather and threat of being hit by a passing mega iceberg.
Last year the islands exported $27.4 million in mostly shellfish and goat meat to the US, while only buying $329,000 worth of American goods. Trump’s tariff of 41 per cent on the British territory perhaps reflected his loathing of trade deficits, despite the relatively meagre sums involved.
It cannot be forgotten, too, that one of Trump’s staunchest allies on the world stage is the chainsaw-wielding populist and firebrand President Milei of Argentina, who has not given up hope of reclaiming the Falklands.
“The main reaction has been one of surprise. It’s pretty unusual to hear the White House even talking about the Falkland Islands,” Teslyn Barkman, a member of the Falkland Islands legislative assembly, said. “We’re just trying to understand how the tariff figure was reached. We are a small population and we don’t import much, so perhaps that’s why it looks the way it does.”
St Pierre and Miquelon
There’s still a guillotine in the museum in St Pierre and Miquelon, the French islands that are just a short hop from Newfoundland in Canada. When it was used for the only time, back in 1889, it wasn’t sharp enough, and the executioner had to use a knife to finish off the job. Trump, however, wields an axe.
The president wasn’t afraid to use it on the lingering relic of French interests in north America, home to bootleggers and rum-runners. The last time St Pierre really exported anything of note to the US was in the Prohibition era of the 1920s, when it shipped illicit liquor to thirsty Americans.
Since then, there’s not been a sausage or a shellfish. Yet observers suggested that that the 50 per cent tariff imposed on 5,800 residents had been because, again, there was a trade imbalance. At some point last year, an American bought $3.4 million in goods from the islands, likely to have been crab and lobster.
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Given they imported nothing from the US, this showed as a 99 per cent tariff on US goods, hence the retaliation. The only country with the same tariff was Lesotho, in Africa, a nation Trump says “nobody has ever heard of”. That, though, does export things to the US: diamonds and clothes.
Svalbard and Jan Mayen
It takes a lot to knock the fortunes of 13 polar bear mothers and cubs off the front page, but Trump may have done it. In the frozen Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, there had hitherto been little to report other than the comings and goings of the local flora and fauna.
In the frozen north, coal was once king and was once exported, mostly to Russia. No more. The last working mine to serve a population of just under 3,000 people hardly produces anything and none of the fossil fuel goes to America. The uninhabited volcanic island of Jan Mayen, meanwhile, produces nothing to send overseas and is home to 18 people, who run a weather station and airfield. Still, they have been hit with a 10 per cent tariff and, again, nobody seems to know why. Norway, which does export to the US, was hit with a 15 per cent tariff, while its protectorate, which does not, got a 10 per cent levy.
Tokelau
Three atolls in the South Pacific with an economy worth $8 million would seem to be hardly worth the bother for the world’s richest and most powerful nation. Yet the 1,600 people who call the island chain home are facing tariffs of 10 per cent too. The self-administered territory of New Zealand exports about $100,000 of goods a year, the smallest economy in the world.
Its exports are apparently coconuts and postage stamps. Back in New Zealand, the authorities believed they had seemingly avoided a bullet, despite Tokelau’s inclusion. It was, said Winston Peters, the foreign minister, a day to celebrate. “There is no country in the world that’s done better than us.”
