:) Some background on the "carefully crafted" tariffs on remote islands;
"A Tariff Whodunit: How a Tiny French Archipelago Became Trump’s Top Target
Locals in some of the most remote parts of the globe are sifting through records to figure out how they landed on the list"
Out on the tiny islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, locals spent the past few days trying to get to the bottom of a perplexing mystery: Who sold so much stuff to a buyer or buyers in the U.S. that it got hit with a tariff of 50%, the most punitive of all of President Trump’s levies this week?
“We were stunned,” said Thierry Hamel, who works in the mayor’s office on one of the islands, which are French overseas territory perched a few miles off the coast of Canada.
The question of what triggered a trade war between this barren archipelago and the world’s biggest economy is consuming officials here. “We are 6,000 people and export nearly nothing to the U.S., except maybe some tuna,” Hamel said earlier this week, his shrug almost audible down the phone line.
U.S. trade data show the islands sold virtually nothing to the U.S. for the past 10 years, except in July 2024 when $3.4 million in goods was sent to America. In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s announcement Hamel was scratching his head over who had done this sudden chunk of business with America. “Someone sold an aircraft a few years back,” mused Hamel as he racked his brain, adding he thought it was sold to Colombia.
Before that the last time the island did serious business with the U.S., he said, was during prohibition in the 1920s when it became a waypoint for Canadian whisky being smuggled stateside.
The fact that the territory produces very little is a running joke in France. The day before the tariff announcement, French state TV ran an April Fools’ segment joking that the French were planning to source new heavy artillery weapons from the archipelago.
Some of the most remote parts of the world were swept up in Trump’s tariffs this week, sparking questions about how his administration concluded it was being cheated by places few even knew existed.
Those in the administration’s crosshairs include Nauru, one of the world’s smallest countries with a population of around 11,000. The tariffs also hit some places that aren’t technically countries, including the frozen Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard and La Reunion, a piece of France located in the Indian Ocean. Some targets are only inhabited by animals. Heard Island and McDonald Islands, a territory of Australia, are home to penguins and not much else.
Tariffs hit some places that aren’t technically countries, including the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. Photo: Angela Owens/WSJ“Poor old penguins,” Don Farrell, Australia’s trade minister, said in a television interview Friday. “Don’t know what they did to Mr. Trump.”
Economists have been trying to work it out, too.
It turns out the White House calculated the tariffs on some 200 countries in two main ways. For most, it set out a flat tariff of 10%.
For the others, it took the amount of a country’s trade imbalance with America, then divided it by the value of the goods the U.S. imports from that nation. It said that figure represented the tariff applied to American goods.
From there, the Trump administration roughly halved that figure to come up with a new levy of its own.
Heard Island is home to penguins and not much else. Photo: Inger Vandyke/Universal Images Group/Getty ImagesThe results have raised a few eyebrows. The Falkland Islands, a British overseas territory off the coast of Argentina, is petitioning the U.K. government to help it understand how it got hit with a 41% tariff. Teslyn Barkman, who looks after trade matters in the Falklands’ legislative assembly, said it couldn’t figure out the Trump administration’s math and said 90% of the country’s fish exports went to Europe, providing a large quantity of calamari eaten in Spain.
“We have one flight arriving here a week,” she said, adding she wasn’t sure what was sent stateside but assumed it wasn’t very much.
Local officials in Norfolk Island, a tiny external territory of Australia in the Pacific largely dependent on tourism, were similarly caught off guard. Initial information from the Trump administration suggested Norfolk Island would be hit by a 29% reciprocal tariff, higher than the 10% levied on the rest of Australia.
“We were astonished,” said George Plant, the island’s administrator, who didn’t think Norfolk Island would appear on a government list in faraway Washington.
The only island export he could recall was seeds for Kentia palms, a popular indoor plant, which he said had gone to Europe. He couldn’t think of anything the island sends to the U.S., nor figure out why people in the Trump administration thought Norfolk Island imposed such hefty trade barriers to justify a high reciprocal tariff.
“We don’t have tariffs, and we don’t have any non-tariff barriers that would affect any exports from the United States,” he said. “The only export we have is happy people.”
From what little data is available, the island has a substantial trade deficit. In 2022, it exported $1.96 million but imported $28.1 million, according to a report prepared for the local government, which cited figures from the Observatory of Economic Complexity. Exports to the U.S. were estimated at $271,000.
An official in Norfolk Island said he couldn’t think of anything it sends to the U.S. Photo: David Kirkland/Universal Images Group/Getty ImagesCraig Wilson, managing director at DeltaPearl Partners, which prepared the report, said he suspected the OEC figures are based on official U.S. data, which could be wrong. He said he doesn’t know of any actual exports from Norfolk Island to the U.S.
“If you stood at the bowls club on a Friday night and asked anyone if they knew of any exporters, they’d all say no,” Wilson said, referring to the island’s popular lawn bowling club.
Part of this conundrum can be explained by the fact that some of the goods that arrived in the U.S. appear to have been mislabeled as coming from the island, including a supply of leather for shoes.
Despite the initial shock, Emily Ryves, who makes cheese and skin care products at the Hilli Goat on Norfolk Island, said the tariffs wouldn’t impact her business because she doesn’t send products to the U.S.
“We’re just a tiny island on the other side of the world,” she said. “Nobody even really knows where we are.”
Back in St. Pierre and Miquelon, meanwhile, Hamel and the local team were beginning to get a sense of what might have happened.
Officials in St. Pierre and Miquelon parsed through the trade books to figure out what the islands sold to the U.S. Photo: Chantal Briand/AFP/Getty ImagesThough linked to France, the islands impose their own customs tariffs, including a 100% levy on American whiskey, though rarely is anything imported directly from the U.S.
After parsing through the trade books, officials thought they found the answer. Someone in 2024 had sold some $3 million of halibut and other seafood to the U.S., triggering Washington’s massive trade response.
“It was a truly exceptional sale,” said Hamel. “We rarely do business directly with America.”
As for the halibut monger, his or her identity remains a mystery."
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