Old fishing houses in Saint-Pierre and Miquelon.IMAGO/Reuters
Saint-Pierre and Miquelon is a frigid and fogbound place, a collection of eight relatively obscure islands off the southern coast of Newfoundland best known until recently as a major smuggling base for America-bound booze during Prohibition.
Gangsters such as Al Capone and Bill McCoy set up shop on the archipelago in the early 1900s and ran alcohol to New England, according to an account in Smithsonian magazine. And while the U.S. government stuck to its virtuousness, locals willingly traded their fishing nets for a piece of the bootlegging action – becoming stevedores and warehouse workers as the islands “floated on a veritable sea of whiskey, wine and money.”
The French territory hasn’t done much in the way of serious business with the United States since. Which is why its 6,000 residents are now shocked to find themselves in the spotlight of a global trade upheaval caused by Donald Trump. The U.S. President hit the collectivité d’outre-mer with a 50-per-cent import tariff last week – the most punitive levy of all those foisted on alleged trade offenders, matched only by Lesotho in Africa.
“When I first saw that we’d become Public Enemy Number 1 for America, I thought it was a joke,” said Stéphane Lenormand, a retired history teacher who represents Saint-Pierre and Miquelon in France’s National Assembly. “We’re a minuscule economy by world standards.”
Editorial: Trump’s tariff fish tales snare Saint-Pierre and Miquelon
As President Trump takes aim at an ever-wider checklist of countries in his global tariff crusade, pint-sized and far-flung places are suddenly making news. Some of the world’s smallest and most remote locations are now facing U.S. import duties, even some without human heartbeats. They include Australia’s Heard Island and McDonald Islands in the South Indian Ocean, volcanic outcrops that are home to penguins and little else; and Jan Mayen, a Norwegian island and former whaling station that has zero economy and no permanent residents, according to the CIA Factbook.
How did the Trump administration establish that it was being ripped off by these economic minnows? How did places some people could never find on a map swiftly get cast as villains and thrust onto centre stage of a global trade battle? The president’s rationale is mystifying political leaders and analysts alike as they try to decipher his end game. And maybe that’s the point.
“This is Trump bringing the entire world to its knees, even little territories that nobody knows,” Mr. Lenormand said, adding the strategy appears to be to scare and divide trading partners. “He hits a big punch. And then he tries to negotiate.”
There is no shortage of theories on social media about why Saint-Pierre and Miquelon in particular was targeted.
One hypothesizes that the whole thing is tied to an April Fool’s Day spoof segment that ran on French state TV, which reported that France had launched plans to build a new military weapons factory on the islands to produce its Caesar 155-mm howitzers. “If Trump’s administration took the bait, it could be one of the most bizarre cases of policy being influenced by satire,” the Economic Times of India said.
Alison Lafargue, a former resident of Saint-Pierre who now lives in Nimes, France, suggested in a post on LinkedIn that Americans harbour a grudge against the French territory for keeping their citizens well-libated during Prohibition. “Officially, this is protectionism. Unofficially, it is a belated revenge for having watered their ancestors on the sly,” she said.
When local authorities in Saint-Pierre realized Mr. Trump’s “reciprocal tariff” chart was real and they were being targeted, they went into detective mode. They had no idea how they landed on the list given they’re an administrative division of France, never mind who exported enough goods from the islands to warrant being lumped in with trading partners that the president said “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered” the United States for more than five decades.
U.S. Census Bureau data shows the French territory neither exported nor imported anything in significant numbers to and from the United States for the better part of 10 years except for one blip. In July, 2024, it sent shipments worth US$3.4-million south to America while taking in $100,000 in goods, the numbers show. The result, based on the Trump administration’s crude and much-criticized tariff calculation methodology: A massive trade imbalance that earned the islands the maximum 50-per-cent penalty.
It didn’t take long for islanders to start piecing together what might have happened. Someone on Saint-Pierre and Miquelon sold a big batch of Atlantic halibut fish and other seafood into the United States that month. “It was pretty exceptional,” said Thierry Hamel, a communications staffer at Saint-Pierre city hall. “Generally our fish is sold into Canada.”
The likely culprit? ASPM Océan’s 37-metre-long fishing ship Terre Nuevas, which sails under the flag of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. It’s the only vessel in the archipelago that targets halibut, and on June 3 last year, it returned to port in Saint-Pierre after 15 days at sea and unloaded 16 tonnes of the fish from its cargo hold, according to a report at the time by public broadcaster FranceInfo. The haul would be sold in Boston, the report said.
This was news then and still is, because Canada has been locked in a fight with France for years over fishing rights off the Newfoundland coast – basically to hash out who’s allowed to catch various fish types, where and how much in order to ensure the sector’s long-term viability. The Terre Nuevas crew caught the halibut legally in international waters, FranceInfo’s report said, but were undoubtedly “spied on” by Canadian fishermen in the sector, who publicly voiced their opposition to the French booty ahead of the ship’s return to port.
How much did this one catch vex the Canadians? Hard to tell. But three days after the Terre Nuevas haul was off-loaded, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with Gabriel Attal, then prime minister of France, to talk halibut on the sidelines of D-Day ceremonies in Normandy. The two countries struck a deal on halibut quota-sharing shortly afterward but they’re still at odds over cod and other species.
In Saint-Pierre, the territory’s main hub, the streets are full of cars and trucks from French brands, but you also see American-made Fords and Chevys. The archipelago imports roughly half of its goods from Canada but doesn’t keep track of U.S.-made imports because they’re part of the Canadian volumes, says Janick Cormier, director of CACIMA SPM, the territory’s main business association.
She said she suspects those aren’t being tallied up at all in the calculations by Trump’s staff, which is why the islands show a trade surplus with the United States when it should be a deficit.
“If you account for what we actually bring in from the USA via Canada, it would definitely swing that trade balance pretty fast,” Ms. Cormier said, flicking at the absurdity of the islands’ plight. “But it’s not us that’s going to negotiate with the U.S. government. It’s the French government that represents us.”
By Monday, island authorities had received word that the White House had reviewed its tariffs and lowered the penalty on Saint-Pierre and Miquelon to a base level of 10 per cent, Mr. Hamel said in an interview. He said he did not know what had caused the U.S. administration to make the change.
All of this might be funny if it weren’t also so anxiety-inducing for local residents. As the last vestige of France’s once-far-reaching possessions in North America, the territory and its fragile economy are heavily dependent on the motherland for financial support. But there are about a dozen fishing companies on the islands and other private industry players pushing to grow, and they’re worried about how the geopolitical fallout from a muscle-flexing United States will affect them, Ms. Cormier said.
As for the French citizens of this remote but oddly colourful place, people who frequently mention their close ties to Canada (Mr. Lenormand said he just happened to be wearing a Montreal Canadiens T-shirt when interviewed from Paris and Ms. Cormier mentioned a recent visit to her mother-in-law’s home in Halifax), they’re hoping this new episode doesn’t result in a crippling increase to their already-burdensome cost of living.
“Everyone is scared,” says José Alvarez, the long-time owner of the Txetxo bar near Saint-Pierre’s commercial wharves. “They won’t say so openly but they’re scared.”
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to attribute information about the sale of halibut in July, 2024, to Thierry Hamel, a communications staffer at Saint-Pierre city hall, and to report that island authorities have received word that the tariffs had been lowered over the weekend following the article's original publication.