Trump slaps tariffs on Arctic islands with almost no export

The United States has set a 10% tariff on Svalbard and on Jan Mayen, according to the Barents Observer. The newspaper reports that the president, Donald Trump, announced it on a Wednesday, and that what he intends with the measure for these two places is unclear. Mainland Norway was given a higher rate of 16% on everything it sells to the United States.

Coal used to be the archipelago's biggest export, but that has changed. The Russian mine in Barentsburg produces barely enough to run the local power plant, and whatever remains goes by ship to Murmansk. No. 7, the last small Norwegian mine, near Longyearbyen, is due to close within weeks. The main lines of business in Longyearbyen are tourism, science and education. A small brewery on Svalbard sells beer abroad, though the paper says the United States is probably not a leading market for its web shop.

Svalbard has about 3,000 residents, the Barents Observer said. Longyearbyen has about 2,500, which makes it the biggest community. The two Russian settlements, Barentsburg and Pyramiden, have 297 residents together. Ny-Ålesund, the science town, has a few hundred people who work there on rotation. Jan Mayen has no permanent population. Fewer than 40 people serve there in rotation, at the weather station and in the Norwegian military detachment on the island, which lies between northern Norway and Greenland.

The Barents Observer places the two Norwegian territories among other remote locations covered by the tariff round that the White House opened on 2 April. The Australian sub-Antarctic territory of Heard and McDonald islands, which is mostly inhabited by penguins, also gets 10%. So does Tokelau, near New Zealand, which has fewer than 2,000 residents. Russia and Belarus are the two European countries left out of the tariffs, the Barents Observer added.