Trump Imposes Tariffs On Uninhabited Islands And Remote Locations: World Bank Data Raises Questions

President Donald Trump has reportedly imposed reciprocal tariffs on some of the world’s most remote and uninhabited locations, along with various global trade partners, on ‘Liberation Day.’

What Happened: The Trump administration declared a 10% reciprocal tariff on the Heard and McDonald Islands, an uninhabited Australian external territory situated approximately 1,000 miles north of Antarctica, reported Forbes.  The Australian government website describes these islands as “one of the wildest and remotest places on Earth”.

These tariffs also apply to other regions, including the British Indian Ocean Territory, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, which have fewer than 600 residents, Norfolk Island, and the Norwegian Arctic islands of Svalbard and Jan Mayen, which have no permanent population.

The impact of these tariffs on the Heard and McDonald Islands remains uncertain due to their minimal economic activity, which is limited to some Australian commercial fishing in their economic zone.

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Why It Matters: The imposition of tariffs on such remote and uninhabited locations raises questions about the rationale behind these decisions. For instance, Norfolk Island exported goods worth $655,000 to the U.S. in 2023, the main export being leather footwear worth $413,000, according to Observatory of Economic Complexity data. However, the administrator of Norfolk Island, George Plant, refuted these figures and told The Guardian that there are no known exports from Norfolk Island to the U.S.

Similarly, the Heard Island and McDonald Islands, which are Australia’s ‘external territories’, reportedly exported products worth $1.4 million to the U.S. in 2022, primarily “machinery and electrical” imports, according to World Bank data. The nature of these goods remains unclear. In the previous five years, imports from these islands ranged from $15,000 to $325,000 per year.

The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, told the publication, "Nowhere on earth is safe."

China has been most affected by Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs, with a 34% tax on top of the existing 20% tariffs on Chinese imports. Meanwhile, Canada and Mexico have been exempted from the baseline 10% tariff rate as the U.S. considers imposing a 25% tariff on the majority of imports from these countries.

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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.