🇺🇸 🇦🇺 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.
