Trump official explains bizarre reason tariffs are on Antarctic islands where there are no humans and only penguins

An officials has explained the bizarre reason Trump's tariffs have been applied to Arctic islands which are solely inhabited by penguins.

Donald Trump announced last week a series of 'reciprocal tariffs' on around 60 countries across the world in a bid to 'Make America Wealthy Again.'

The POTUS said the US has been 'ripped off' for decades when it comes to trade, and announced on so-called 'Liberation Day' (April 2) a 10 percent baseline tariff on most foreign goods coming into the country, which came into effect over the weekend.

Others were inflicted with a higher rate, including the EU (20 percent), China (54 percent), Japan (24 percent) and Thailand (36 percent) which will come into effect on April 9.

Trump said: "For decades our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered from nations, near and far, from both friend and foe alike."

"It's our declaration of economic independence," he added.

However, it's not just humans who will face the wrath of the tariffs either as the president announced hikes will apply to remote islands that are only populated by animals.

Specifically, 10 percent tariffs have been applied to 'one of the most remote places on Earth,' Heard Island and the McDonald Islands, an external Australian territory in the Antarctic where the only living things are penguins and seals.

Yet people were left wondering how declaring a trade war with penguins would help 'liberate' the US from reliance on foreign goods.

As one joked on social media: "Those penguins have been mooching off the US for long enough. Their reign of terror has come to an end."

Now, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has defended the plans to Face the Nation on Sunday (April 6).

Host, Margaret Brennan, said it seemed 'kind of random' that the Heard and McDonald islands which don't export to the US and are 'quite literally inhabited by penguins' were hit by tariffs.

The POTUS announced his tariffs plan on April 2 (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

She asked the Trump official why they were hit with 10 percent tariffs, adding: "Did you use AI to generate this?"

Lutnick laughed off the suggestion, saying: "No. What happens is 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."

The secretary said Trump is aware of this apparent loophole and is 'tired of it.'

"He's going to fix that," Lutnick continued. "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, so he ended those loopholes, these ridiculous loopholes, and now what he's trying to say is: 'I'm going to fix the trade deficit of the United States of America. It's a national security issue. We need to make medicine. We need to make semiconductors. We need to make ships. We need to have steel and aluminum.'

Lutnick explained the bizarre reason why the penguin islands have been hit (Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

"Come on, we need the greatness of America to actually be built in America and he's tired of getting ripped off by the rest of the world."

However, critics still aren't convinced, as one wrote on Twitter: "[Lutnick] really hit the Sunday circuit like, 'We had to hit the penguins with tariffs... just in case.' Sir. Be serious. Nobody’s smuggling microchips through Antarctica. Ain’t no penguin cartel laundering goods through the McDonald Islands."

"They screwed up and are definitely trying to style it out," said another.

A third added: "Then I notice Mars is conspicuously absent from the list."