The Southern Shrimp Alliance is applauding President Trump’s imposing of tariffs on imported shrimp. Leann Bosarge, a board member at the Southern Shrimp Alliance, says she hopes the tariffs will provide a boost to the U.S. shrimping industry.
“We hope that this will be the first step to level the playing field for the U.S. domestic shrimp industry, which has been fighting unfair trade around the globe for decades now,” Bosarge said.
The six countries that account for 96% of all shrimp imports all have tariffs, ranging from 10% for Argentina and Ecuador to 46% for Vietnam. Bosarge says shrimp from all of those countries are far inferior to the shrimp caught off the Louisiana coast, but up until now it’s been more cost-effective for restaurants to keep that imported shrimp in stock.
“They have an unfair advantage, where they have a lower cost of production. Sometimes, they even have subsidies propping up their facilities and their overhead. And then they pump their product full of banned antibiotics,” Bosarge explained.
Bosarge says the United States has been subsidizing the U.S. shrimping industry’s direct competitors for far too long.
“Our tax dollars in the U.S. are being used to prop up your private industries over there, and then you turn around and send your product back to this country to directly compete with our domestic shrimp industry, and we’re not going to allow that anymore,” Bosarge said.
The top 6 suppliers accounted for 96% of all U.S. shrimp imports:
· India (42.3%) – tariff rate of 26%
· Ecuador (26.9%) – tariff rate of 10%
· Indonesia (15.4%) – tariff rate of 32%
· Vietnam (7.2%) – tariff rate of 46%
· Thailand (2.4%) – tariff rate of 36%
· Argentina (2.1%) – tariff rate of 10%
No other country accounts for more than 2% of import volume
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