Irish Examiner view: 'Wired' helps expose the absurdity of Donald Trump's weird tariff list

Amid the hilarity about the US levying tariffs on uninhabited islands, digital economy bible 'Wired' cuts to the chase about the absurdity of the whole affair

The Wired article is succinct: 'Do you know why the US has a trade deficit with Madagascar? They produce vanilla; we don’t. Unless we’re suddenly setting up vanilla assembly lines in Ohio, that’s not changing.' Picture: iStock

There has been widely-shared jollity over how some of Donald Trump’s tariff targets found themselves on the naughty step.

Norfolk Island, for example, in the Pacific 1,600km north-east of Sydney, is a small volcanic outcrop with 2,188 residents who have been put in the same 29% band as major economies in Asia and Europe, despite being part of Australia (10%) and importing nothing apart from some rodent poison. Their small export, worth less than $1m annually, is Kentia palm seeds, mostly shipped to Europe.