Tipsheet

Lutnick Was Asked About Tariffs Against 'Penguin-Inhabited Islands.' Here's What He Had to Say.

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  April 07, 2025 1:00 PM

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick explained on Sunday why President Trump’s tariffs included the uninhabited Heard and McDonald Islands, a move against the Australian territory that has faced widespread mockery on social media.

“When we saw the president stand in the Rose Garden holding up that chart that you helped make, that wasn’t actually tariffs. That was actually confusing to investors, because it was some kind of other formula, and the countries themselves seemed kind of random,” said “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan.

“Like, why are the Heard and McDonald Islands, which don’t export to the United States and are quite literally inhabited by penguins, why do they face a 10 percent tariff? Did you use AI to generate this?” she wondered. 

“No. No,” Lutnick said laughing. “The idea — look, the idea is that there are no countries left off … because the idea — what happens is, if you leave anything off the list, the countries that try to basically arbitrage America go through those countries to us.”

As an example, the Commerce secretary pointed to what China did in Trump’s first term. 

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“The president put tariffs on China — right? — in 2018, and then what China started doing is they started going through other countries to America,” he explained. “They just built through other countries, through America. And so, the president knows that, he’s tired of it, and he’s going to fix that. So basically he said, look, I can’t let any part of the world be a place where China or other countries can ship through them’ — ”

“Through the Heard Islands,” Brennan interjected.

“And now what he’s trying to say is, ‘I’m going to fix the trade deficit of the United States of America,'” Lutnick said. “It’s a national security issue. We need to make medicine. We need to make semiconductors. We need to make ships. We need to have steel and aluminum. Come on, we need the greatness of America to actually be built in America. And he’s tired of getting ripped off by the rest of the world.”