Donald Trump 's commerce secretary Howard Lutnick clarified that a 10% baseline tax on the Heard and McDonald islands -- which are literally inhabited by only penguins -- was not a mistake and not an AI thing. As Lutnick appeared on CBS' Face the Nation, host Margater Brennan asked him why those Penguin-inhabited islands, which do not export anything to the Unites States, were featured on the list. "Did you use AI to generate this?"
Lutnick said the idea was that there should be no countries left off.
"If you leave anything off the list, the countries that try to basically arbitrage America go through those countries to us. Any country- like we had tariffs, the President put tariffs on China, right, in 2018, and then what China started doing is they started going through other countries to America. 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," Lutnick said.
But would China reach the US through penguin Islands? Lutnick said it was to end any kind of loopholes.
Are the tariffs to stay? Or will there be negotiations?
Lutnick told CBS that there is going to be no postponing as the tariffs are definitely going to stay in place for days and weeks. However, White House officials revealed that at least 50 countries have reached out to the US after Trump unveiled the tariffs and negotiations are on.
"What it shows is that all these countries know that they've been ripping us off, and the day has come for that to end. Now the problem is, it's not just tariffs- like, I'll give you an example, like Vietnam said they'd like to be zero-zero. Remember, Vietnam sends us $120 billion worth of goods every year and we send them about $12 billion. So it's not the tariffs. It has nothing to do with tariffs. If they went to zero-zero, they would go to 200 billion with us. We need to stop the rip off," Lutnick said.
Lutnick said the idea was that there should be no countries left off.
"If you leave anything off the list, the countries that try to basically arbitrage America go through those countries to us. Any country- like we had tariffs, the President put tariffs on China, right, in 2018, and then what China started doing is they started going through other countries to America. 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," Lutnick said.
But would China reach the US through penguin Islands? Lutnick said it was to end any kind of loopholes.
Are the tariffs to stay? Or will there be negotiations?
Lutnick told CBS that there is going to be no postponing as the tariffs are definitely going to stay in place for days and weeks. However, White House officials revealed that at least 50 countries have reached out to the US after Trump unveiled the tariffs and negotiations are on.
"What it shows is that all these countries know that they've been ripping us off, and the day has come for that to end. Now the problem is, it's not just tariffs- like, I'll give you an example, like Vietnam said they'd like to be zero-zero. Remember, Vietnam sends us $120 billion worth of goods every year and we send them about $12 billion. So it's not the tariffs. It has nothing to do with tariffs. If they went to zero-zero, they would go to 200 billion with us. We need to stop the rip off," Lutnick said.
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