Angry Penguins

Last week, Trump astounded the world by placing tariffs on the Heard and McDonald Islands—remote specks on the map inhabited only by penguins. Yes, penguins. As if that weren’t bizarre enough, he also announced a wave of retaliatory tariffs on many other countries, although Russia was conspicuously missing from the list. People everywhere were scratching their heads, trying to decode the logic—or lack thereof—behind the numbers he was using. They didn’t seem rooted in reality but rather in some arcane formula known only to Trump himself.

Luckily, some of the brighter minds on Bluesky managed to crack the code and shared their findings with the rest of us. Turns out, Trump had used one of the many AI models to generate his numbers. In theory, a smart move. In practice? Not so much. The AI apparently used our trade imbalances divided by the value of trade to determine the tariff rate.

Here’s where it gets absurd. Suppose we had a trade imbalance of $5 with the penguins (we’ll circle back to how that’s even possible in a moment). For the moment, let’s say an adventurous tourist pays a savvy penguin $6 to take its photo, then sells the penguin a copy of that photo for $1. Boom—$5 trade imbalance. The U.S. has now “imported” $6 worth of goods (the photo), and the penguin has “exported” $1 worth, leaving us with that $5 gap.

Too bad you’ll never see this

Now, no actual tariffs were levied in this fictional scenario, but here’s how Trump’s formula works: trade imbalance ($5) divided by imports ($6), then divided by 2 “to be nice.” That lands the penguins with a whopping 42% tariff. So, any future penguin photo shoot will cost the photographer $6 to the penguin and an extra $2.52 to the U.S. government. Unsurprisingly, the photographer has scrapped his plans for a penguin calendar. And just like that, the dream of a new color TV for the penguin community center vanishes into thin air.

Let’s move to a real-world example. China’s actual tariff rate was only 7.5%. But with the same AI-driven logic, Trump’s model spat out 67% and imposed a 34% tariff. China responded in kind, raising their tariff from 7.5% to 34%, instantly making their position 4.5 times worse.

So now we know how the numbers were derived—but why on earth did Trump decide to target an island full of penguins, along with a U.S. military base? I don’t have all the answers, but someone astutely noted that Trump’s list bore an eerie resemblance to how IP address blocks are allocated. It actually tracks. Normal humans don’t think in terms of IP addresses, but AI? It sees the world very differently. To an AI, IP addresses can be more meaningful than borders or political alliances.

This is the risk of letting AI make decisions without careful fact-checking. AI is powerful, but it’s only as smart as the person using it. Ask a vague or flawed question, and you’ll get back something that might sound smart—but is actually nonsense. And if you don’t know what the answer should look like, you’re flying blind. Unfortunately, that sounds a lot like Trump.

So no, these tariffs aren’t really based on unfair trade practices—they’re based on trade imbalances. But are trade imbalances inherently bad? One Bluesky user offered a great analogy.
Imagine my wife and I go out to eat at Texas Roadhouse and spend $34. Boom—trade imbalance! Texas Roadhouse refuses to buy any of my wife’s amazing homegrown tomatoes or peppers, citing vague food safety regulations.

Now, I won’t drag you through the full backstory, but thankfully I’ve got $34 in the bank from when I was still a full-time employee. That “imbalance” isn’t a crisis. As long as I’m making more than I’m spending, I’m fine. And when that’s no longer the case? I’ll just stop eating at Texas Roadhouse.

Sure, it’s a personal example—not a national one—but it highlights a key truth: reciprocal trade balances aren’t the right metric for setting tariffs. Trade flows are never perfectly equal, nor do they need to be. We live in a global economy. Trade imbalances are not only normal—they’re inevitable. And sometimes, just sometimes, you have to consider more than two entities.

Looks like a few others agree with my opinion of Trump ~ 5 million at last count

And just because I have a lot of credits; Angry Penguins on Heard:

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