When President Donald Trump showed a list of countries to receive tariffs from the U.S., some names were not expected.
The reason? No one lives there.
The list, released Wednesday, were countries facing “reciprocal tariffs.” Trump is accusing these countries,” of ripping off the U.S. with their own tariffs,” according to a report on Mediaite.
Once the list was released, many on X noted it included those countries with no inhabitants as well as a territory where there only U.S. military base.
Those uninhabited include Heard and McDonald Islands, an Australian territory and one of the most remote places on Earth. It was hit with a 10% “reciprocal tariff.”
The British Indian Ocean Territory was hit with a 10% reciprocal tariff. The only inhabitants there are U.S.-U.K. military personnel and contractors.
“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 said. “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?” British Conservative politician Oliver Cooper posted on X. “He’s taxing an American military base.”
The tariffs Trump accused the countries and territories putting on the United States were not tariffs, those on X surmised.
Instead, these tariffs were “calculated by taking the trade deficit divided by U.S. imports – resulting in a faulty calculation,” per Mediaite.
