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Donald Trump made a ‘mistake’ when he slapped almost 30 per cent tariffs on Norfolk Island and the tiny Aussie outpost will actually instead face the same rate as the rest of the country. The Australian territory, which has a population of about 2,000 people and is located 1,500km east of Australia in the Pacific Ocean, was hit with a with a 29 per cent reciprocal tariff by the US administration on Thursday.
The decision bamboozled Prime Minister Anthony Albanese because the rest of Australia – of which Norfolk Island is a part – received the baseline tariff of 10 per cent. ‘I’m not sure that Norfolk Island, with respect to it, is a threat to the United States economy, and therefore, I think it being singled out is rather strange,’ the Prime Minister said on Thursday.
And now the Norfolk Island Administrator, George Plant, has told Daily Mail Australia that the territory has received assurances from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade that it will not be singled out. Mr Plant said he and the island’s inhabitants were ‘shocked’ at the ‘very strange’ decision. ‘We don’t expect to get involved in trade disputes with the United States and the rest of the world,’ he added. ‘We have no exports to the USA so we don’t know where they got their numbers from.’
The island’s famous pine trees were used by Captain Cook for masts for the British fleet after the island was settled in 1788. And in the 1800s and early 1900s, many American whaling ships stopped on Norfolk Island during their voyages across the Pacific Ocean.
But there is no history of trade between the island and the US. ‘Uninhabited islands like the Heard and McDonald Islands were also on the list so we are not sure what’s going on there,’ Mr Plant added.
‘The last thing to be traded in that part of the world was probably fur seals.’ The Heard and McDonald Islands, which contain two active volcanoes, sit around 6,000km from the Australian mainland and are home to a colony of penguins, birds and seal, and no humans.
They received a 10 per cent tariff in Trump’s initial announcement. Mr Plant said the decision to include Norfolk Island initially was ‘clearly an error’.
But he does not hold it against the US President. ‘Our main business is welcoming tourists to our beautiful island and President Trump is welcome to come and visit at any time,’ he said. ‘But it’s not for sale.’
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