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rob7404/03/20252 repliesview on HN

According to the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/donald-trump...):

> Despite this, according to export data from the World Bank, the US imported US$1.4m (A$2.23m) of products from Heard Island and McDonald Islands in 2022, nearly all of which was “machinery and electrical” imports. It was not immediately clear what those goods were.

In the five years prior, imports from Heard Island and McDonald Islands ranged from US$15,000 (A$24,000) to US$325,000 (A$518,000) per year.

Maybe someone has accidentally uncovered some kind of tax evasion scheme here?


Replies

matt-p04/03/2025

Bizarre, tax/tariff evasion or "Mistake" does seem like the most likely explanation - yet US$1.4m is too little to bother evading tax on really. I mean that could be a refit on a boat or something -- $1.4Mn is literally nothing.

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Symbiote04/03/2025

It could be a clerical error — intending to choose Haiti or Honduras, or maybe Hong Kong, and clicking or typing HM by mistake.

Or maybe OCR is used somewhere and has made the error.

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