US President Donald Trump, in his Liberation Day announcement from the White House Rose Garden on April 2, has imposed a 10% tariff on Heard Island and McDonald Islands – an Australian external territory home only to penguins. The islands, among the most isolated places on Earth, have no permanent human population and were last visited by humans nearly a decade ago.

As the barren islands, primarily used for scientific research and remaining untouched by commercial activity, have been hit with tariffs on all their exports, social media was quick to react.

Trump’s move quickly became a subject of mockery online, with one social media user quipping, “Are they gonna tariff Mars next?” while another declared that no place on Earth is safe from Trump’s tariffs.

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Former congressman Tom Malinowski jokingly wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “The Heard Island and McDonald penguins have been taking advantage of us for too long – it’s about time we stood up to them!”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the US Immigration Council, said that the US administration will now “tariff the seagulls”.

He added, “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.”

“These penguins have clearly been exporting cuteness to the United States. We must slap a big 10% tariff on that. Those freeloaders have been waddling around for too long, avoiding the long arm of US trade policy. No longer. Liberation Day is nigh!” he went on to say with a dash of sarcasm. 

An X user joked that the US government imposed tariffs on uninhabited islands after an AI chatbot advised them to do so. “ChatGPT told Trump officials these empty islands tariff American goods at 10%, so he placed a reciprocal 10% tariff on them,” he said, adding that reaching these islands requires a two-week sea journey from Australia.

Another expressed, “The penguins are going to be really pissed off in the Australian territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands when they find out about the ‘reciprocal tariffs’.” 

Some were simply baffled. “This is the dumbest shit I’ve ever seen,” one person commented.

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“There are so many freeloading penguins in the human-free land of Heard and McDonald Islands. It’s time these goddamn birds pay up. A 10% tariff is only fair! Pay up, Penguins. It’s time,” another sarcastically demanded justice.

The White House has yet to explain why it levied tariffs on the islands.

Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, weighed in on tariffs, saying, “Nowhere on Earth is safe.” He added Norfolk Island was hit with a 29% tariff,  and questioned whether it was truly a trade competitor to the US.

Heard Island and McDonald Islands are among several Australian external territories separately listed in the tariff order. These territories, which are part of Australia but not self-governing, will face a 10% tariff on their goods. Other affected regions include the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Christmas Island, and Norfolk Island.

Heard Island is dominated by Big Ben, an active volcano towering 2,745 meters above sea level. This island is covered in snow and glaciers. McDonald, on the other hand, is surrounded by several smaller rocks and islets. It was just 100 hectares at the time of its UNESCO inscription. 

US President Donald Trump has levied a 26% reciprocal tariff on India, despite maintaining that the PM is his “great friend”.  “The Prime Minister just left. He’s a great friend of mine. But I said, ‘You’re a friend of mine, but you haven’t been treating us right’. They charge us 52%, but we charge them almost nothing for years and decades. It was only seven years ago when I came in.”

He has imposed 34% on China and 20% on the European Union, among others. In addition to this, a 10% baseline tax has been introduced on imports from all countries.

These new measures add to a series of recent trade penalties, including a 25% tariff on auto imports, affecting China, Canada, and Mexico.

“For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike,” Trump said in his April 2 speech.