AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein
President Donald Trump implemented tariffs on several uninhabited islands on Tuesday as part of a confused effort to establish equal trade.
The White House published a list of countries that had been slapped with “reciprocal tariffs” on Tuesday after Trump accused the nations of ripping off the U.S. with their own tariffs.
Social media users were quick to point out, however, that the list included uninhabited islands and a territory where the only significant settlement was a U.S. military base.
Among them, the uninhabited Heard and McDonald Islands – an Australian territory and one of the most remote places on Earth – was slapped with a 10% “reciprocal tariff.”
The British Indian Ocean Territory was also slapped with a 10% reciprocal tariff, despite the fact that the only inhabitants of the islands are U.S.-U.K. military personnel and contractors, who occupy a Joint Military Facility in the territory.
“The Heard and McDonald Islands are completely uninhabited. Population zero. I guess we’re going to tariff the seagulls?” mocked American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. “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.”
“Can someone please tell Donald Trump that the only people in the British Indian Ocean Territory are the U.S. base at Diego Garcia?” reacted British Conservative politician Oliver Cooper. “He’s taxing an American military base.”
Social media users quickly realized that the supposed tariffs Trump accused the countries and territories of placing on the United States were not, in fact, tariffs, and were instead calculated by taking the trade deficit divided by U.S. imports – resulting in a faulty calculation.
