2700. 🇺🇸 🇦🇺 Will The Madness Of Trump Damage New Issue Collecting?

 

🇺🇸 🇦🇺 There seems to be mayhem in the United States at present as the new president, Trump, continues to cause wholesale confusion chopping and changing his administration’s policies almost on a daily basis to assert himself as Master Mischief Maker on the national and international scene. He has a number of goals - to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, to be the first person to be accorded a second state visit to Britain so that he can have tea with the King again and to worry as many friends and allies of the United States as he can while giving succour, though by no means irreversibly, to dictators such as Putin. Perhaps he thinks it’s all one big joke. Personally, I rather think he does.

  His goal of a second tea with the king looks assured after the British prime minister handed him an invitation to carry out a second state visit in front of television cameras during a live broadcast but his goal of obtaining a Nobel Prize looks a little more uncertain. And as regards upsetting everyone, his introduction of tariffs with every country in the world seems to have achieved just that.Tariffs of at least 10% have been added to everything imported from abroad from all countries be they friend or foe, rich or poor or populous or unpopulated. Hence the ‘countries’ included in the list of tariff-affected countries include the Australian territory of Heard and McDonald Islands which, to general hilarity, has no human population and exports nothing so that people have been forced to ask themselves just what the local penguins have done to Trump to make him take such action against them.

  Heard and McDonald Islands have no post office nor postal service.The British first claimed the islands in 1910 and then passed them on to Australia in December 1947. The islands were recognised as a World Heritage Site in 1997. Australians occupied continuously a station at Atlas Cove from 1947 to 1955. I found an item on the internet which shows a postcard depicting the Australian commemorative on the subject of the Australian Antarctic Expedition with a circular postmark dated 23 January 1955 at Heard Island with a violet rectangular cachet, “31/2 AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC COMMEMORATIVE STAMP FIRST DAY OF ISSUE AT HEARD ISLAND”. The obverse features the Heard Island base camp photographed in front of the Big Ben mountain. Given the current fame of Heard and McDonald such items are very attractive. 

  Australia Post released a set of 4 stamps and 1 miniature sheet containing all four in 2017 depicting various scenes around Heard Island with the local penguins and seals featuring prominently in the designs (see Blog 1062).

  Now, once again, Heard and McDonald have their moment of fame thanks to Trump and his mad schemes. But it seems to me that there is an important question affecting stamp collecting surrounding all this trumpery moonshine.

  The latest news from the White House brings with it the information that the higher rates of tariffs have been suspended for three months for all countries except China though the situation may change again tomorrow or the day after depending, I suppose, whether or not Trump forgot to take his proton pump inhibitors and consequently experienced an episode of troublesome nocturnal indigestion. Who can tell? Trump appears to be as mad as Caligula and Heliogabalus though so far, thankfully, without the gratuitous violence associated with those unpleasant gentleman. Perhaps he’s just more of a Tiberius, old and sleazy though Tiberius wasn’t really so much of a megalomaniac as Trump appears to be. History will unravel itself and no doubt, if stamps continue to be issued beyond the near future then that history will be reflected in them.

  But Trump’s ever changing tariffs may well affect the future of new stamp issues. Trump has retained the eye-watering tariffs on goods from the People’s Republic of China, having now increased them yet again to 125% and this may affect the New York-based Intergovernmental Philatelic Corporation which, though an American company, appears to have the numerous philatelic items it produces and releases by contract in the name of various foreign postal administrations, mostly, if not totally, printed in China. Clearly that arrangement exists because the IGPC can get its stamps produced cheaply by this arrangement - and many of them do indeed look cheaply printed - but, I assume, if the very high tariffs persist IGPC will have to get its products printed in the USA and that will increase its costs significantly. 

  What will happen then? - even higher face value stamps to pay for the extra costs? costs of production that are too high to make it no longer worthwhile producing these items? the end of new issues altogether from IGPC’s client territories? Various consequences can be imagined.

  Of course postal administrations wishing to sell their stamps to buyers of philatelic items in the USA will find that collectors there may be less keen to buy their products if the retained 10% tariffs significantly affect their ability to buy the stamps. Likewise those of us who buy newly issued foreign stamps from US dealers may be less willing to do so if their prices increase because they had to pay an extra 10% to buy the new issues from those foreign countries and have to pass the extra costs on to their potential customers. 

  I suspect these Trump tariffs will affect the new issues buyer and seller in other ways that I have not thought of but if Trump does not change (again) his current policies then the collecting of new stamp issues may change significantly, adding to the effect of vast amounts of expensive and excessive new issues coming on to the market daily from greedy, irresponsible and disreputable stamp producers such as Royal Mail, Australia Post, Stamperija and Isle Of Man Post Office.

🇳🇿 Thought for the day .

New Zealand’s first postage stamp, 1855 -

New Zealand’s latest postage stamp, 2025 (170 years later) -

Presumably Queen Victoria would not be “amused”.

🇬🇧 Royal Mail -

and finally, if you think that Royal Mail isn’t getting enough money out of you by selling you vast numbers of stamps at enormous prices, then here’s another way you can help to swell RM’s coffers which the organisation has just started to publicise on X -

Yes, really, though elsewhere Royal Mail has stated that at present, “This is just a concept” so don’t rush out to buy them because there are none available.

2695. 🇮🇴 Trump To Annex BIOT And Create The US Indian Ocean Territory.

 

🇮🇴 While the British government continues to negotiate with that of Mauritius to persuade the latter to take the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean off its hands and to be good enough to receive £9 to £18 billion courtesy of the British taxpayer for the trouble of doing so, the somewhat unpredictable President of the United States, Trump, has indicated that he will cut through all this talking and annex the British Indian Ocean Territory to the USA and rename it the US Indian Ocean Territory and then no-one need bother about it any more.

This will enable the USA to ensure the security of the huge and strategically important US military base on Diego Garcia and make sure that the People’s Republic of China, to which Mauritius is a supplicant state, does not get its hands on the island. Trump also revealed that he intends to not only preserve the security of the military base on the island, but also establish a space vehicle launch facility on Diego Garcia as suggested by one of his political allies, Elon Musk.This was presaged, strangely, by a BIOT stamp issue of 2009 which depicted the launch of Apollo 11 and other stamps depicting American spacecraft and a miniature sheet with an American flag planted on the moon just as Trump now intends to plant a Stars and Stripes on the BIOT. 

  We can only speculate at the moment as to whether Trump’s planned annexation of BIOT will result in a ‘new country’ - the USIOT - finding its way into the stamp catalogues but it may well be that this newly named territory will indeed have its own stamps when a new postal service is established there.

 Trump has also stated that he may well annex the Falkland Islands to prevent Britain and Argentina from ever feeling the need to go to war with each other again and to make it easier for Americans to go on holiday in the Caribbean he will probably take over Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Turks and Caicos Islands and Montserrat. The British government is said to be having talks with Trump’s officials on how these transfers of sovereignty can be completed smoothly. No consultation with local populations is felt necessary as Trump feels everyone who lives on these islands will be much better off under American sovereignty.

Reported - 1 April 2025.

2689. 🇧🇩 Bangladesh Commemorates Uprising Of July 2024.

 

New Issues -

🇧🇩 Bangladesh Post -

30 December 2024 - Festival of Youth - 1 stamp. Lithographed by The Security Printing Corporation (Bangladesh) Ltd, Gazipur. Rating:- ***.

9 February 2025 - The July Uprising which led to the overthrow of the prime minister Sheikh Hasina - 1 stamp. Lithographed by Security Printing Corporation (Bangladesh) Ltd, Gazipur. Rating:- *****. A modest stamp commemorating a highly significant historical event.

19 February 2025 - Mother Language Day - 1 stamp. Designed by Md Boni Adam and lithographed by Security Printing Corporation (Bangladesh) Ltd, Gazipur. Perforated 12.5. Rating:- **.

Trump and The Commonwealth.

  There has been a lot of nonsense published in the press in the past day or so about the President of the United States, Trump, expressing the view that he would like his country to become an Associate Member of The Commonwealth. This idea is said to have arisen from the suggestion that the Royal Commonwealth Society has issued a secret invitation for The United States to take on such a role. The Royal Commonwealth Society is not the sort of organisation that can issue invitations to countries to join The Commonwealth; there is no ‘Associate Membership’ status in The Commonwealth: The King is not in a position to invite countries to join The Commonwealth - it is necessary for all 56 Member States together to extend an invitation to join and when the United States President is talking about an important Commonwealth country such as Canada becoming the 51st state of the USA very much against its citizens’ will, then these reports are clearly nothing short of Trumpery moonshine.

  All this fake news, to use Trump’s own expression, comes as the United States Postal Service has announced that it intends to issue a sheetlet of 15 self-adhesive stamps showing battlefields of the rebellion against the British Crown which began with the Battles of Lexington and Concord fought on 19 April 1765, 250 years ago. Trump claims to admire King Charles III rather more than his predecessors seem to have admired King George III.

Post scriptum - a comment from Ian/Norvic which I accidentally deleted - 

2683.. 🇺🇸🏴‍☠️ IGPC Reveals Designs Of Latest Products. 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦

 

New Issues -

🇺🇸🏴‍☠️ Intergovernmental Philatelic Corporation (IGPC - USA-based producer and marketer of philately-related products under contract from various postal authorities. These issues were previously listed in Blog 2667 but are now relisted with appropriate illustrations. All are rated:- 0.

🇦🇬 Products inscribed Antigua and Barbuda -

Five “issues” all stated to have been released on 12 December 2024 -

Reelection of Donald Trump as US President - 2 miniature sheets

Shanghai Expo, the Great Wall of China - 2 miniature sheets

Insects - 2 miniature sheets 

Coral reefs - 2 miniature sheets 

Caribbean region snakes - 2 miniature sheets 

🇬🇭 Products inscribed Ghana -

Two “issues” stated to have been released on 12 December 2024 -

Reelection of Trump - 2 miniature sheets 

Planets of the Solar System - 2 miniature sheets 

🇹🇻 Products inscribed Tuvalu -

Five “issues” stated to have been released on 18 December 2024.

Chinese New Year, Year of the Dragon - 2 miniature sheets 

Traditional Chinese attire - 2 miniature sheets 

‘Love and Hope’ - 2 miniature sheets 

‘Life under the sea’ - 2 miniature sheets 

75th anniversary of the assassination of Mohandas Gandhi, Indian politician - 2 miniature sheets.

2680. 🇨🇦 Commonwealth Day 2025. 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦

 

  Commonwealth Day this year occurs today on Monday 10 March. Each year, a theme is adopted and this year’s is ‘Together We Thrive’ and this assertion of mutual support may prove more necessary than the official who came up with the catchphrase might have expected if the dangerously preposterous Trump acts to make Canada the 51st state of the United States, which he has vowed to do. Canada’s neighbour’s unpredictably loopy leader has thrown Ukraine to the Russian wolves, is drooling at the prospect of taking over Greenland, a self-governing part of sovereign Denmark, and wants to turn Gaza into a cross between Las Vegas and the French Riviera under American control and therefore this year’s expression of the aspiration that Commonwealth territories should be ‘together’ to ‘thrive’ might be more demanding than the leaders of the fifty six Commonwealth countries expect, especially in the case of Canada. 

  Trump’s imperialist actions or future actions, if he carries them through, are likely to be devastating for the free world and we may well see its effects in future stamp issues. The subjects featured on ongoing new stamp issues continue to provide an ever lengthening tapestry of modern world history and although the medium-term future of new issue releases looks more and more doubtful, for the moment at least, events, the actions of arrogant men full of hubris such as Trump and Putin, and the changes in the fate of nations will continue to be detailed on postage stamps which makes stamp collecting a more significant hobby than most people in this modern age would credit for..

  Meanwhile Canadian stamps remind us that the Americans attempted to invade Canada during the War of 1812 and were roundly defeated. It might be a good time for Canada Post to issue more stamps to commemorate Canada’s successful expulsion and remind Trump of what he would be up against (and that’s the War where the British burned down the White House!). See Blog 220.

  Meanwhile Charles III remains King of Canada by the consent of the people of Canada.Together we thrive.

New issues -

🇲🇹 MaltaPost -

4 April 2025 - Domestic cats, second issue - 4 stamps. Designed by Andrew Micallef and lithographed by Printex and perforated 14. Total face value €3.56. Illustrations awaited.

🇮🇳 India Post -

March 2025 - 25th anniversary of the National Innovation Foundation, My Stamp, personalised stamp with attached label sold by India Post in sheets of 12 at a premium price.