Among the locations Donald Trump slapped with tariffs Wednesday are two uninhabited islands near Antarctica in the southern Indian Ocean.
The Heard and McDonald Islands, which sit about halfway between Australia and South Africa and are territories of the former country, now face 10 percent tariffs, which would pose an issue if the seals and penguins that call the small landmass home were exporting anything to the U.S.
That the volcanically active islands were included at all in Trump’s so-called “liberation day” list of tariffs drew amusing responses online, in part because the White House listed them as countries—which they are not.
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“The Heard Island and McDonald penguins have been taking advantage of us for too long - it’s about time we stood up to them!” former New Jersey congressman Tom Malinowski joked on X.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a fellow at the American Immigration Council, suggested the tariff targets were found through a cursory Wikipedia search of the world’s nations, and not much else.
“The Heard and McDonald Islands are completely uninhabited. Population zero. I guess we’re going to tariff the seagulls?” he wrote on X. “It kind of feels like a White House intern went through Wikipedia’s list of countries and just generated this list off of that with no further research.”
Brendan Duke, senior director for federal fiscal policy at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, reacted similarly: “Taking on America’s real enemies — a bunch of islands you’ve never heard of,” he wrote on X.
Later Wednesday night, MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow chimed in.
“Those volcanoes and the penguins and seals who live there, they will never menace the American economy again as they have in the past by flooding us with their cheap exports of...what?” she grinned. “Fresh air, cool breezes, a waft of eau de penguin?”
A spokesperson for the Australian Antarctic Division, which manages the Heard and McDonald islands, confirmed the islands were uninhabited and referred the Daily Beast to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Other obscure islands the White House targeted were Norway’s Svalbard, Réunion Island, a French overseas territory in the Indian Ocean, and Australia’s Norfolk Island, home to about 2,000 people.
When Trump announced the tariffs at the White House on Wednesday afternoon, he predicted the markets would soar as a result. They promptly did the opposite.
CNBC Senior Economic reporter Steve Liesman, who previously criticized Trump’s “insane” tariff-related decisions, explained the concern among investors and consumers.
“For all of President Trump’s talk of a new golden age, this huge tax increase will inevitably result in higher prices for American families, lower growth and business investment, and diminished exports and manufacturing output,” he said. “So it is not a good forecast or a good look from the economists and the forecasters.”
