Tariffs: Why Is It Fine When Others Use Them, But Not the US?

In the extremely unlikely event that Australia tried to avoid tariffs by moving production to remote islands (even though the cost of doing so would probably far exceed the tariffs avoided, and the amount that could be produced would be a tiny sliver of the Australian export economy), Trump or whoever could just as easily impose tariffs on those islands when that actually happens. There's no reason for him to do this preemptively.

Has the USA put tariffs on imports such as coffee, bananas and other items that they need but can't produce in the USA?

If I need something that another person makes, then I can buy it from that person. If that person hasn't got much money, then should they be obligated to buy the expensive stuff make - or is it ok if that person just buys the stuff they need instead of the expensive stuff I make?

Poorer countries sell their stuff to the USA but - for some reason - don't necessarily buy expensive stuff from the USA

Oh - and why were services left off that list? People buy a lot of US services. Maybe they won't in the future - and will look elsewhere?

@lljkkI agree , Trumps volatility causes uncertainty in the markets. His unpredictability makes everything risky

USA already had lots of tariffs. There wasn't a problem with USA imposing tariffs.

There is a problem with imposing tariffs almost overnight, and based on bizarre logic where the tariffs are justified by trade surplus/trade debt/drugs/terrorism/immigration etc. Demanding open markets to tiny and poor countries where few people can afford to buy American goods is bizarre. Ignoring that a large part of USA economy is exporting services is bizarre, too.

The even bigger problem is that Trump will keep changing his mind & threatening more tariffs. He'll make "a deal" like he did in first term (China, North America) & repeatedly threaten to rip it up at a moment's notice to demand "better" terms for USA and new deals. The rollercoaster won't stop at all when the Administration makes any deal... the rollercoaster will continue constantly until at least January 2029.

I am baffled at any country trying to make trade deals with the US fed. govt right now. Such a "deal" will be worthless and highly temporary the moment it's written down. The bully will very soon clamour for "more". Remember that Trump says that the USA is a downtrodden poor country abused by other nations. He says it's fine and fact that USA can only get richer by making everyone else much poorer.

@EasternStandard@hehehesorry
China is the only country that on its own is large enough to make an impact on the US. Trump will just carry on doing what he wants to smaller countries both politically and economically. He is the POTUS and therefore is entitled to act within that role, but his interference and threatening to other countries is my view beyond that. China is entitled to respond to his tariffs and by doing this it sends a clear message to Trump that his actions have consequences.

None of this is good for the rest of the world, but Trump may well have brought a knife to a gun fight with China - they are ruthless and willing to play the long game.

Agree hoping China stand up to US is an interesting one. It depends how strong and militarised they are as they grow access across the world, and what their long term plans are.

True. And Falklands was uninhabited until 1690/1760. But then op suggest countries could move manufacturing to Heard and McDonald to escape tariffs. Just how many countries and industries can fit there? Even if artificially extended? And how long would that take - Trump would be out as president by then (of course he could be serving a third term as an octapresident or another president could uphold the tariffs).

It looks like protectionism would look if applied by someone who once had a conversation on a golf course with someone who read a book about it in maybe 1972, and then they didn't develop the policy themselves or in discussion with experts but gave it to an unpaid 22 year old intern who had no idea what they were doing but made up some kind of answer for their boss by asking chatGPT for a formula, and the resulting policy was then discussed at a meeting of people whose main qualification for being there was their ability to say 'Thank you for your genius Mr President' without laughing.

Thanks for explaining the penguins business.

Wasn't there someone who claimed ownership of the entire moon, because of some legal loophole, and then sold bits of it in the Innovations catalogue?

If that was the case, why hasn't he put tariffs on any of the Channel Islands?

These islands are already inhabited and are just off the UK and French coasts so easily accessible.

If he was genuinely just trying to close off any loopholes he hasn't done a very good job of it, has he!

This was the first known-source result from my very quick google. It's NPR but the story's very basic history, so unlikely to be wrong in this case. It's a neat little lesson in how trade tariffs backfire.

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/02/nx-s1-5348033/us-economy-tariffs-trump

So many wedding takes here

Yep I agree with that @RafaistheKingofClay

Though penguins have a much higher IQ than the orange man & his cronies.

Howard Lutnick’s IQ is marginally below that of the penguins. He’s also lying to cover the Trump admin’s arse. There is no loophole that needs closing. Shipping through the islands would give a tariff the same as the place that stuff originated from as tariffs are based on country of origin not where it is shipped from. You can’t close a loophole that doesn’t exist.

There is no reason at all that Norfolk Island needs a different tariff to Australia or that St Pierre and Michelon which is part of the EU gets an astronomical tariff of 49% while the rest of the EU gets 20%. (And this one is funny, it’s a single shipment of lobster from July 2024 that’s caused the issue)

So we can take from all that is that The Donald & his advisors take everything at face value & don't check the veracity of information given/accquired/read.

I'd like to say/think that most people do check information given but that's not always the case, I'm sorry to say.

China harvests organs from political prisoners, their police force is disgustingly bribed to the point where they will turn a blind eye to children being kidnapped for the sex and organ trade, vulnerable people die on the streets because the government doesn't care, exploits children in sweatshops and Africans in precious metal mines, cause countless extinction of endangered animals all around the world because of the import of animal parts but you're cheering them on to "stand up to him" because le orange man bad, woof.

The rest of the world should cut off the US and trade amongst ourselves.

Also @Tricho is correct with her loophole reasoning (as explained by Trump's advisors):

'The US Commerce Secretary has defended the country's decision to impose tariffs on a group of uninhabited islands, which are populated only by penguins and seals.
The imposition of tariffs on the Heard and McDonald islands was meant to close "ridiculous loopholes" and would prevent other countries from shipping through the islands to reach the US, Howard Lutnick told the BBC's US partner CBS.'
Source:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce84jr5mvnno.amp

As much as I think The Donald is nuts, his & his advisors reasoning for putting tariffs on 'Penguins' is due to this:

'According to export data from the World Bank, the islands have, over the past few years, usually exported a small amount of products to the US.
But in 2022 the US imported $1.4m (A$2.3m; £1.1m) from the territory, external, nearly all of it unnamed "machinery and electrical" products.
The Guardian has also reported that an analysis of US import data and shipping records suggests that tariffs imposed on the Heard and McDonalds Islands, as well as Norfolk Island, are based on incorrect data.
It found shipments had been wrongly labelled as coming from the territories, rather than their actual places of origin.'
Source: www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly8xlj0485o

He doesn’t like penguins because they are half black.

Well he hasn't tariffed Russia because he's in negotiations with them due to the war, but Ukraine has a 10% tariff.

That's all.

Slightly off topic to the thread, but that would depend what country wanted to do that, the money they have and people power they have.

An example would be the Spratley and Paracel Islands. These were originally all unoccupied and inhabitable.
They aren't now and contain some pretty beefy infrastructure. They have been altered and constructed artificially by China.

Evidence? And I’m going to need more than a quote from Trump saying 50 countries have phoned us up.

Trump is a bit stupid.

If you want your people to buy locally produced goods, you have to wean them off a centuries old Western habit of using cheap foreign labour to produce the vast amount of goods you want to produce.

The only way america can cut say, Taiwan out of the supply chain is to force its own people to accept worse wages and working conditions, to do so.