No one is exempt from Donald Trump‘s newly imposed exportation tariffs, not even countries inhabited majorly by animals. Last week, the president unveiled a range of reciprocal tariffs against almost all nations in an executive order. Among those nations are the Heard and McDonald Islands, which are supposedly uninhabited by humans, as only penguins live there.
When questioned about the seemingly ridiculous decision, the U.S. Commerce Secretary said China is to blame. During a Face The Nation segment on CBS News, journalist Margaret Brennan asked Secretary Howard Lutnick if they had used AI to map out the countries that would be affected by export tariffs.
“…The countries themselves seemed kind of random. Like why are the Heard and McDonald Islands, which don’t export to the United States and are quite literally inhabited by penguins, why do they face a 10% tariff? Brennan interrogated. “Did you use AI to generate this? Why are they on the list?”
The New York native laughed, saying that AI did not generate the chart. He explained that the Trump administration placed tariffs on such places to stop countries like China from rerouting their export route and avoiding the tariffs.
“What happens is, if you leave anything off the list, the countries that try to basically arbitrage America go through those countries to us. The president put tariffs on China in 2018, and then what China started doing is they started going through other countries to America, and so the president knows that, and he’s tired of it, and he’s going to fix that,” Lutnick said.
He added, “So basically he [Trump] said, ‘Look, I can’t let any part of the world be a place where China or other countries can ship through them, so he ended those loopholes, these ridiculous loopholes.”
Several citizens reacted to the news segment hilariously. One said, “Oh yes, those cunning penguins. Always looking out for a new opportunity to co-opt American economic policy with a little international legal loopholing. Smart birds.”
Another user hilariously agreed, “Those penguins are sneaky f*cks! Don’t be fooled! They’ll do anything to make a buck and RAPE Amercuh!”
On the other hand, another user believes the news is too ridiculous to be true.
“So Trump is concerned that companies in tariffed countries would relocate their plants to the Heard and MacDonald islands, where only penguins live, to avoid the tariffs,” one comment read. “Is that what I’m actually hearing, or am I really stoned right now?”
According to the U.S. Secretary, President Trump intends to use this strategy to fix the trade deficit in the country because it has become a “national security issue.”
