Louisiana shrimper praises Trump tariffs as industry lifeline

HOUMA, Louisiana — For nearly 50 years, James Blanchard has made his living in the Gulf of Mexico collecting shrimp from the sea.

It’s all he’s ever wanted to do, ever since he was about 12 and accompanied his father, a mailman and part-time shrimper, as he spent his weekends trawling the swampy waters off the coast of Louisiana. Blanchard loved adventure and splendid isolation.

He made a good living, even though the industry was collapsing around him. He and his wife, Cheri, purchased a comfortable home in a neat subdivision here in the heart of Bayou Country. They helped three children go to college.

But Blanchard eventually began considering forced retirement, selling his 63-foot boat and hanging up his wall of big green fishing nets when he turns 65 in February.

“The quantity of shrimp was not a problem,” said Blanchard, a fourth-generation shrimper who regularly hauls 30,000 pounds of frozen food north during a two-week trip. “It makes a profit, because the prices were so low. »

Then came President Trump, his tariffs and his famous itchy trigger.

Blanchard is a lifelong Republican, but was not initially a big fan of Trump.

In April, Trump imposed a 10% tax on shrimp imports, which increased to 50% for India, the largest U.S. overseas source of shrimp. Additional levies were imposed on Ecuador, Vietnam and Indonesia, which are other major suppliers to the United States.

Views of the 47th President, Inside and Out

Tariffs can slow economic growth, disrupt markets and spur inflation. Trump’s solitary approach to tax and trade policy has landed him before the Supreme Court, which is expected to rule by the summer on a major test of presidential power.

Blanchard nibbles on a bag of dried shrimp.

But for Blanchard, these tariffs have been a lifeline. He saw a significant rise in prices, from 87 cents per pound for wild shrimp to $1.50 or more. That’s a far cry from the $4.50 a pound, adjusted for inflation, that American shrimpers earned in the 1980s, when shrimp was less common in home kitchens and a luxury item.

All Blanchard has to do, however, is put aside his retirement plans, and for that – and Trump – he appreciates it.

“Writing all the bills in the world is great,” he said of congressional lawmakers’ efforts to prop up the nation’s declining shrimp fishermen. “But it doesn’t produce any results.”

Trump, Blanchard said, kept his promises.

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Shrimp is the most popular seafood in the United States, but this has not sustained the American shrimp industry.

Wild-caught domestic shrimp represent less than 10% of the market. It’s not a question of quality or overfishing. A flood of imports – farmed on a large scale, lightly regulated by developing countries and therefore cheaper to produce – has decimated the market for American shrimp.

In the Gulf and South Atlantic, landings of warm-water shrimp — the term used by the industry — had an average annual value of more than $460 million between 1975 and 2022, according to the Southern Shrimp Alliance, a trade group. (These figures are not adjusted for inflation.)

A boat goes up a canal in Chauvin, Louisiana.

Over the past two years, the value of the commercial shrimp fishery has fallen to $269 million in 2023 and $256 million in 2024.

As the nation’s largest shrimp producer, Louisiana has been particularly hard hit. “We’re getting to the point where we’re on our knees,” Acy Cooper, president of the Louisiana Shrimp Assn., told New Orleans television station WVUE recently.

In the 1980s, more than 6,000 licensed shrimpers worked in Louisiana. Today there are fewer than 1,500.

Blanchard can see the ripple effects in Houma — in shuttered businesses, a depleted job market and high incidence of drug overdoses.

Latrevien Moultrie, 14, fishing in Houma, Louisiana.

“It affected everyone,” he said. “It’s not just the boats, the infrastructure, the packaging plants. It’s also the hardware stores. The fuel docks. The grocery stores.”

Two of the Blanchards’ three children moved away, seeking opportunity elsewhere. A daughter is a law professor at the university. Their son works in logistics for a trucking company in Georgia. Their other daughter, who lives near the couple, is pursuing her advanced degree in educational psychology as a stay-at-home mother of five.

(Cheri Blanchard, 64 and retired from the state Department of Labor, keeps the books for her husband.)

It turns out the federal government is at least partly responsible for the decline of the nation’s shrimp industry. In recent years, U.S. taxpayers have subsidized overseas shrimp farming with at least $195 million in development aid.

Sitting at their dining room table, near a Christmas tree and other holiday remnants, Blanchard read a series of scribbled notes — a Bible at the ready — as he and his wife decried the lax safety standards, labor abuses and environmental degradation associated with overseas shrimp farming.

James Blanchard and his wife Cheri appreciate Trump’s policies. His personality is something else.

The fact that their taxes help support these practices is particularly infuriating.

“A slap in the face,” Blanchard called it.

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Donald Trump grew up slowly on the Blanchards.

Both are lifelong Republicans, but they voted for Trump in 2016 only because they saw him as less bad than Hillary Clinton.

Once he took office, they were pleasantly surprised.

They had more money in their pockets. Inflation was not a problem. Washington seemed less authoritarian and less intrusive. By the time Trump ran for reelection, the couple were in full agreement, and they happily voted for him again in 2024.

Reading materials from the Republican National Committee sit on James Blanchard’s kitchen counter.

Still, there are things that irritate Blanchard. He doesn’t care much for Trump’s hot-headedness and can’t stand all the childish insults. For a long time, he couldn’t stand listening to Trump’s speeches.

“You’ve never really listened to many Obama speeches,” Cheri interjected, and James agreed that it was true.

“I liked his personality,” Blanchard said of the former Democratic president. “I liked his character. But I didn’t like his politics.”

It’s the opposite with Trump.

Unlike most politicians, Blanchard said, when Trump says he will do something, he usually does it.

For example, strengthening border security.

“I have no problem with immigrants,” he said, as his wife nodded. “I have a problem with illegal immigrants. (She echoed Trump in blaming Renee Good for his death last week at the hands of an ICE agent.)

“I have sympathy for them as a family,” Blanchard continued, but crossing the border does not make someone a U.S. citizen. “If I drive down the highway at 70 miles an hour in that 30 mile an hour zone, guess what? I get a ticket. … Or if I get in that car and drink, guess what? They take me to jail. So what’s the difference?”

Between the two, there’s not much — aside from Trump’s “trolling,” as Cheri called it — to complain about.

Blanchard hailed the snap capture and arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as another example of how Trump does and means exactly what he says.

“When Biden was in office, they had a $25 million bounty on [Maduro’s] head,” Blanchard said. “But apparently this was done knowing it would never be enforced.”

Another empty speech, he suggested.

Just like all the years of broken promises from politicians promising to curb foreign competition and revive the ailing American shrimp industry.

James Blanchard aboard his boat as he docks in Bayou Petit Caillou.

Trump and his tariffs gave Blanchard his livelihood back and for that alone he is grateful.

There is maintenance and repair work to be done on his boat – named Waymaker, to honor the Lord – before Blanchard gathers his two-man crew and sets sail from Bayou Little Caillou.

He can barely wait.