1 week Ago By Shane Wright
It’s two specks of land populated by penguins and seals. Heard and McDonald islands, which sit 4000 kilometres south-west of Perth and are home to Australia’s only active volcanoes, are uninhabited apart from an occasional visit by scientists to check in on the unusual wildlife. McDonald and Herd Island and some of its inhabitants - a tariff threat to the United States.
But according to US President Donald Trump, the penguins and seals of Heard and McDonald islands are worthy of a 10 per cent tariff. As part of Trump’s Liberation Day, Heard and McDonald islands - an Australian external territory with no recorded exports - were included in his import tax hit list. They weren’t the only Australian external territories to grab the President’s attention.
Both Cocos and Christmas islands, which sit in the Indian Ocean off the WA coast, were also slapped with a 10 per cent tariff. Australian officials, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, were also caught surprise by a 29 per cent tariff on Norfolk Island whose 2200 residents are registered to vote in the ACT. Norfolk Island officially recorded $411,000 in leather shoe exports in 2023.
“I’m not quite sure that Norfolk Island, with respect to it, is a trade competitor with the giant economy of the United States, but that just shows and exemplifies the fact that nowhere on earth is exempt from this,” Albanese said. Prominent British historian Simon Schama noted the Heard and McDonald islands tariff and what it might mean to its fauna. “This just about sums it all up - 10 per cent tariff on Heard and Macdonald Islands which are completely unpopulated.
Bit hard on the penguins though to have their guano tariffed,” he said on X. The two islands were not the only penguin and seal friendly parts of the globe to face a tariff impost. Facing a Trump tariff - a reindeer of Svalbard.
Credit: Jan Hvizdal The Falkland Islands, part of Great Britain, is facing a 41 per cent tariff compared to the 10 per cent tariff on the United Kingdom. It’s not just the frozen deep south in the President’s sights. Svalbard and Jan Mayen, two ice and snow-covered parts of Norway, are also facing 10 per cent tariffs.
Svalbard is home to about 3000 people, polar bears and reindeer plus one of the world’s few seed banks - a genetic back-up for thousands of varieties of edible plants. The Australian Antarctic Division confirmed there are no people on the two islands at present. Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis.
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