US shrimp fishers see Trump tariffs as a lifeline: ‘We’re basically on our knees’ | Fishing

Sandy Nguyen has strong opinions on where the best shrimps in the United States are produced.

A second generation shrimp in New Orleans, Nguyen maintains “our [Louisiana] Shrimp tastes Better than Florida shrimps or Mississippi shrimps or shrimps in Texas ”. His family moved to the coast of the Gulf of Vietnam during Jimmy Carter administration, And his father, like many of these immigrants in the region, worked like Fisher. The company gave Nguyen a headquarters at first glance at one of the country’s most abundant sources of seafood.

The shrimps thrive in the brackish waters, and Louisiana has the largest delta on the continent, where the fresh water of the Mississippi mixes with the salt water of the Gulf of Mexico. Partly due to the extent of this delta, the shrimps in Louisiana provide almost a quarter of all the shrimp taken in the United States, providing around 72 million pounds of shrimp in 2023 – the largest share of any state.

But things have radically changed since the 1980s, when the Nguyen family settled in Louisiana. Demand and prices dropped during the COVVI-19 pandemic. A series of devastating hurricanes – Laura, Delta, Zeta and Ida – has caused more than half a billion dollars of losses in the seafood industry since 2020. Nguyen hoped that 2022 would be a turning point, but Russia then invaded Ukrainne, and the price of diesel would increase, showing the cost of operating. While inflation seemed to climb everywhere else, the wholesale price of shrimp decreased.

All of these factors occurred alongside another massive change and several decades: an increase in shrimp imported from Asia and South America. Talk to most shrimp and they will say that this familiar enemy lowers the price of shrimp, which makes it almost impossible for us the shrimp to hang on.

So when Donald Trump announced scanning prices, a decision that threw global markets into Tumult and caused consternation between many industries, some American shrimps have rather expressed their optimism.

“I know that it will affect many other industries. But for us, it is good,” said Aaron Wallace, who helps manage the Criminal Society anchored in Georgia.

The American shrimp industry turns out to its counterparts in Ecuador, India, Indonesia and Vietnam. In these countries, aquaculture farms proliferate, producing a prodigious volume of shrimp. Together, these four countries represent more than 90% of shrimp imported into the United States, or about 1.5 billion lb of shrimp in 2023. It is more than 20 times the quantity of shrimp produced in Louisiana.

“Really, our battle is the shrimp industry raised abroad,” added Wallace. “We are mainly on our knees [due to] What imports do.

“The high farm industry has created a market where shrimps are easily available everywhere, everywhere,” he continued. “This has changed the way we consider shrimps against the day.”

Today, shrimps are the most consumed seafood in the United States, over the salmon, tuna and tilapia. Like the chicken breast, it is a protein that people expect to buy at a lower cost and regularly. Unlike its crustacean cousins, lobster and crab, which are generally associated with luxurious festivals, shrimps are economical and omnipresent. It is frequently found on chain menus like Popeyes at unlimited specials in Sizzler and, formerly, with red lobster.

But the cheap and the common placement of Shrimp have reached a cost. Consumers are not often aware of the fact that most of the shrimps they consume are imported.

ACY COOPER, president of Louisiana Shrimp Association and fourth generation, said that the prices offer American shrimp the opportunity to withdraw into the national seafood industry.

“We lose our local industry,” said Cooper. This prompted Cooper to vote for Trump, hoping that he would “make America again large in all sectors”, including shrimps.

When Cooper grew up in the 1970s, shrimp was a good job, which could easily support a family. Later, in the 1980s, when Cooper made his debut for the first time, he could get $ 1 the book of small shrimps and $ 4.50 per book of big shrimps. But last year, he could barely obtain $ 1 the book of Dockside buyers for his biggest shrimp.

“Listen, I left school in eighth year and I went to work in fishing because I earned more money than university graduates at the time,” said Cooper. But his own son chose to leave industry. “He just broke my family’s channel,” said Cooper. “He has three children in his house, and he couldn’t do enough to survive.”

Deborah Long, spokesperson for the Southern Shrimp Alliance, “said:” The problem is not cheap imports. The problem is that the counterproductive trade policies that we have led to inexpensive imports “and that other countries benefit from unauthorized practices in the United States.

Long stressed the fact that many Foreign aquaculture operations are subsidized by international financial institutions supported by taxpayers’ dollars and use an unpaid workforce or use prohibited antibiotics. From a long point of view, these factors allow suppliers of foreign shrimp to undermine the prices of suppliers of domestic shrimp.

“When you look at the commercial data, you will find that the 1980s were the glimpse of this industry,” said Long. “The aquaculture came and the shrimps were able to compete. And towards the early 2000s, you started to see a flood of imports. This is where the discharge allegations – selling below the fair value – have entered. ”

However, Martin Smith, an economist at the University of Duke who studies fisheries and seafood markets, said that it was not clear that Trump’s recent widely -based prices – those who target a wide range of goods – are the right tool to deal with a strength of cheap shrimp imports.

He noted that the American Ministry of Commerce was already working on anti -dumping and compensatory tasks, which aim to counter the impact of dumping and government subsidies, on the largest shrimp importers. Already, these tasks showed modest improvements in the prices of the ex-Vaisseaux, the prices of the shrimp are paid on the quay.

“In principle, the system had already discussed the aspects of competition that are unfair,” said Smith. “This additional layer of wide -based prices really says that we will now make it unfair for the rest of the world.”

Smith has also warned that any effort to strengthen shrimp prices could risk reducing the overall demand for shrimp, which would also have a negative impact on domestic shrimps.

“There is a real long -term risk here in the use of prices to try to raise the prices of the domestic product … It could actually repel them in luxury products,” said Smith.

Always, Long, of the Southern Shrimp Alliance, applauded Trump’s prices, that she hoped to put an import breach, while recognizing that it would not be a magical solution for all the problems facing the shrimp.

“It is a short -term measure which is desperately necessary to support these guys and make them pass other seasons while we solve these systemic problems,” said a lot.

But Nguyen has remained skeptical about whether the prices would really help the industry to which she has devoted her whole life.

“I am not enthusiastic about everything Trump does,” said Nguyen. “Even if I am broke, I cannot believe that its prices will help us because I understand the industry economy.”

She pointed out that the prices could raise the price of the rope, steel or even nets, which makes the work of puncture even more expensive.

In addition, from Nguyen’s point of view, it is not only cheap imports lowering prices; It is also the fact that there are fewer processors and large distributors, because the industry has consolidated, leaving the shrimp with little space to negotiate on the quays.

A report on the value chain of Louisiana shrimp, produced so that the coalition restores coastal Louisiana, recognized this disconnection, noting that shrimps like Nguyen are at the bottom of a value chain which tries to compete with low world prices. The shrimps obtain the short end of the stick even when consumers pay more for shrimp in their supermarket or on their plate.

Long, from the Southern Shrimp Alliance, echoes this point.

“While prices collapsed from 2021 to 2023, and the industry has lost more than half of its value – and import values ​​also plunged $ 1.5 billion – consumer prices, the retail price that you would pay in a grocery store, has reached record heights,” said a lot. “There is a large disconnection on the market there.”

Nguyen said it more frankly.

“These are the big dogs, the big companies, which have injured us,” she said, referring to the shopkeepers of the quay, as well as the network of processors, distributors and retailers. “Part of the reason why our prices have decreased considerably is that we make enough shrimp for everyone to become rich.”

In his opinion, the prices will not solve this problem. And that will not fix the devastation it has seen among the shrimp that fight to survive.

By 2023, she noted shrimp that she knew that “brain vascular accidents, heart attacks, overdoses, domestic violence and children could not go to university,” said Nguyen. “A whole lifestyle has been stripped to us in the past three years without fault on our part.”