As part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping new trade policy, the United States has imposed tariffs on imports from dozens of countries and territories—including a handful with no permanent population at all. Among them are Australia’s Heard and McDonald Islands, and Norway’s Jan Mayen, remote outposts home only to seabirds, seals, and the occasional scientific research station.
Critics have mocked the decision as absurd, with some wondering whether the regime believes penguins pose a national security threat. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese commented sarcastically, “I’m not quite sure that Norfolk Island 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 safe from this.”
The islands are part of the Trump regime’s global 10% baseline tariff on all foreign goods, with steeper rates for designated adversaries. The blanket nature of the policy has resulted in what analysts are calling indiscriminate targeting. That now includes regions with no significant exports to the U.S. and no residents at all.
While the economic impact of taxing seal-inhabited islands is virtually nonexistent, the diplomatic signal is not. Officials in Australia and Norway have lodged formal complaints. Environmental groups have also criticized the move, concerned that such actions could undermine protections for ecologically sensitive areas.
“It’s one thing to posture against China or the EU,” said a trade analyst at the Peterson Institute. “It’s another to slap tariffs on ecosystems.”
This episode adds to growing global concern that the U.S. trade regime is being wielded not as an economic tool, but as a political weapon—with logic and diplomacy increasingly replaced by bluster.
In his Ohio speech announcing the measures, Trump declared that America was “finally free from the chains of unfair trade.” As he rallies support around what he has branded “Liberation Day,” the penguins and seals of the Southern Ocean have unexpectedly found themselves drafted into a trade war they never asked for.
