Tiny Australian outposts, including some with no people, targeted by Trump tariffs

Australia’s remote, uninhabited islands in the Antarctic and a tiny territory with barely any exports found themselves caught up alongside global heavyweights in US President Donald Trump's sweeping tariff regime, leaving locals and officials baffled.

Richard Cottle, owner of a concrete-mixing business on Norfolk Island, said on Thursday there was only one explanation when Trump unveiled a hefty 29% tariff on the tiny territory about 965km off eastern Australia: “It was 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 $1m (R18.7m) 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.

“Norfolk Island is a little dot in the world. We don't export anything,” Cottle said by phone.

Norfolk Island was among dozens of tiny territories which appeared on the same list as China and the EU as recipients of Trump's highly anticipated tariff regime, even though they do not have a real manufacturing or export industry.

Some, like the Heard and McDonald Islands in the Antarctic, which like Norfolk Island is overseen by Australia, did not have human inhabitants. No matter, as of Thursday, they faced a 10% tariff for exports to the US

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, on the campaign trail ahead of an election in a month, told the media his country did better than most with a tariff of 10%m half of what the EU was hit with and one-third of what China got, but he had no explanation for Norfolk Island.

“Last time I looked, Norfolk Island was a part of Australia,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

The separate, higher tariff “was somewhat unexpected and a bit strange”, he said.

According to US government data, the US has recorded trade deficits with Norfolk Island for the past three years. The island exported $300,000 (R5.6m) worth of goods to the US in 2022, $700,000 in 2023 and $200,000 (R3.7m) in 2024. Its imports from the US stayed at $100,000 (R1.8m) in those years.

Norfolk Island's imports from the US peaked at $11.7m (R220m) in 2020, when no exports were recorded. The data did not specify what goods were traded.

Other Norfolk Island business owners who spoke to Reuters could think of no manufacturing industry on the island, and said its main industry by far was tourism. One pest control business owner, who asked not to be named, said though they did not export to the US, they imported some rodent bait from the US via Australia.

“Products from Norfolk Island are going to have a 29% tariff? There is no product, so it's not going to have an effect,” said Gye Duncan, who owns a tax consultancy on the island.

Miles Howe, a retired Australian public servant and former Norfolk Island Chamber of Commerce president who lives on the island, said he did not think the tariffs worried Norfolk Island's people.

“I think everyone's rather amused by the idea that we'd even register on the radar of somebody like Donald Trump.”

Reuters