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Behold the latest victims of US President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs. Image Credit: Shutterstock

In one of the frothiest trade spats to date, US President Donald Trump recently slapped a 10% tariff on exports from the Heard and McDonald Islands—barren sub-Antarctic rocks better known for their penguins than any semblance of human commerce. As global markets tried to make sense of the news (and promptly tanked), social media took the cold snap in stride, flooding timelines with penguin jokes so fast you’d think the internet had ice skates.

Political pundits, meanwhile, asked the obvious question: why punish well-dressed flightless birds while leaving certain global superpowers off the tariff list? Former Trump communications official turned critic Chuck Schumer quipped, ‘Donald Trump slapped tariffs on penguins and not on Putin’, provoking more than a few squawks online. 

Our own Prime Minister Anthony Albanese weighed in, wondering why on Earth the US felt threatened by the nonexistent trade might of another tiny outpost, Norfolk Island.

Perhaps the biggest shock was saved for the Falkland Islands—famous for housing a million penguins (and a 1982 dust-up between Britain and Argentina)—which got stuck with a hefty 41% levy. Rarely has so much trouble been stirred up by birds who, ironically, can’t even fly.

Naturally, in a saga starring tuxedo-clad seabirds and bemused world leaders, it’s the global economy that ended up on thin ice, with US stocks plunging faster than a penguin chasing its lunch.

If nothing else, the episode proved that while tariffs may be complicated, a good penguin joke is universally understood.

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