Way back on his April 2 “Liberation Day,” (it feels like a long time ago), Donald Trump released a set of “reciprocal” tariffs. These tariffs bore no obvious relationship to the tariffs or other trade barriers that other countries impose on our exports to them. While many of us were trying to figure out how Trump came up with his numbers — which included large taxes on imports from many major trading partners and longstanding allies — someone noted a 10 percent tariff on imports from the Heard and McDonald Islands.

The key problem with this tariff is that the islands are uninhabited except by penguins and other wildlife. The fact that Trump could come up with a schedule of tariffs that ostensibly took weeks of preparation and still include a set of uninhabited islands showed the ineptitude of his economic team in dealing with the issue that is most important to Trump.

But even worse than this blunder was the fact that they couldn’t acknowledge the obvious mistake. Several days later, when the tariff on the penguins’ exports had become an international joke, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick insisted that the tariff was put in place deliberately. Lutnick claimed the 10 percent tariff was needed........

© Eurasia Review