Lutnick says Trump tariffs on uninhabited islands prevent other countries from using ‘loopholes’

 https://thehill.com/policy/international/5234768-lutnick-trump-tariffs-uninhabited-islands/?tbref=hp

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Sunday defended President Trump’s tariffs even against uninhabited islands, saying they are intended to guard against loopholes.

In an interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” moderator Margaret Brennan asked why uninhabited territories, like the Heard and McDonald Islands, were included on the list that Trump displayed in the Rose Garden, noting they “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?” Brennan added.

“No. No,” Lutnick said. “Look, the idea is that there are no countries left off.”

“What happens is, if you leave anything off the list, the countries that try to basically arbitrage America go through those countries to us,” he continued.