The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #173989   Message #4220214
Posted By: Sandra in Sydney
03-Apr-25 - 04:32 AM
Thread Name: Convicted felon US 47 Pres /Musk coup 2
Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47 Pres /Musk coup 2
I'm having fun!!
Reuters - A tiny Australian outpost gets a steep Trump tariff despite few exports    Reciprocal tariffs of 29% levied on Norfolk Island's exports to US
    US data shows it has had trade deficits with island for past 3 years
    Island's main industry is tourism, some of its business owners say

SYDNEY, April 3 (Reuters) - For Richard Cottle, owner of a concrete-mixing business on Norfolk Island, there was only one explanation when U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled a hefty 29% tariff on the tiny territory about 600 miles off eastern Australia: "it was just a mistake".
Though the rugged volcanic island in the southern Pacific does ship a modest amount of Kentia palm seeds abroad, typically worth less than $1 million a year, mostly to Europe, news of the unusually steep tariff passed through its 2,188 residents on Thursday with a mixture of amusement and confusion.

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Norfolk Islanders overjoyed at brief elevation to tariff bad boys list

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The tiny Australian islands no one expected to draw Trump’s fury 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. (good pic of the inhabitants, caption - The inhabitants of Heard and McDonald islands – a tariff threat to the United States)

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‘Nowhere on earth is safe’: Trump imposes tariffs on uninhabited islands near Antarctica ... Heard Island and McDonald Islands are among several “external territories” of Australia listed separately in the tariff list to Australia, which will see a 10% tariff imposed on its goods.

External territories are part of Australia and not self-governing but have a unique relationship with the federal government. Such territories featured on the White House list were the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Christmas Island and Norfolk Island.

.... In 2023, Norfolk Island exported US$655,000 (A$1.04m) worth of goods to the US, with its main export being US$413,000 (A$658,000) worth of leather footwear, according to Observatory of Economic Complexity data.

But George Plant, the administrator of Norfolk Island, disputed the data. He told the Guardian: “There are no known exports from Norfolk Island to the United States and no tariffs or known non-tariff trade barriers on goods coming to Norfolk Island.”

Albanese said on Thursday: “Norfolk Island has got a 29% tariff. 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 safe from this.”

The export figures from Heard Island and McDonald Islands are even more perplexing. The territory does have a fishery but no buildings or human habitation whatsoever.

Despite this, according to export data from the World Bank, the US imported US$1.4m (A$2.23m) of products from Heard Island and McDonald Islands in 2022, nearly all of which was “machinery and electrical” imports. It was not immediately clear what those goods were.

In the five years prior, imports from Heard Island and McDonald Islands ranged from US$15,000 (A$24,000) to US$325,000 (A$518,000) per year ...

OMG - leather footwear????? machinery & electrical devices??? - those penguins are very clever.

Who is inventing this "data"