Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick confirmed that the taxes against the Heard Island and McDonald Islands were purposeful.
The two area lands were hit with 10 % levies on Saturday. They were among 86 states that met the same fate, but other states are facing more higher taxes on April 9 in response to their taxes on U. S. products. Heard Island and McDonald Islands are mostly populated by birds and abandoned by individuals, which has prompted jeering online.
” Why are the Heard Island and McDonald Islands, which don’t export to the United States, and are quite literally inhabited by penguins, why do they face a 10 % tariff”? CBS News’s Face the Nation number Margaret Brennan asked Lutnick on Sunday. ” Did you use AI to produce this”?
” No”, Lutnick responded laughing. ” What happens is if you leave everything off the record, the countries that try to generally trade America move through those states to us”.
Lutnick cited the 2018 taxes against China that President Donald Trump imposed at that time. As a result of the taxes, China used the gap of other states, which didn’t include tariffs, to send their goods to the U. S.
” And so the leader knows that. He’s tired of it. And he’s going to correct that. But generally he said,’ Appearance, I didn’t let any part of the world be a place where China or different countries may ship through them.’ So he ended those gaps, crazy flaws”, Lutnick explained.
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Former President Joe Biden mainly kept Trump’s taxes against China in place when he took office. Biden’s last tariff against China was in May 2024 when Biden announced tariffs against$ 18 billion worth of Chinese goods and effectively raised sales taxes in the U. S. by$ 3.6 billion.
Lutnick has huge defended taxes against China, as he claims U. S. customers buy more Chinese products than Chinese buyers buy U. S. products.
