Bloomberg Businessweek -As Trump has rewritten America’s economic relationships, some of the country’s most prized exports—Kentucky bourbon, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Midwestern soybeans—have become retaliatory targets for China and the European Union. For its part, Beijing began imposing a 25 percent tariff on a long list of imports from the U.S., including live lobsters, on July 6.
The blow is significant for Maine, the country’s top producer and exporter. The state’s lobstermen had found a lucrative market in China, where consumer demand has grown exponentially in recent years. In 2017, U.S. exports of live lobsters to China were worth $128.5 million, up from a third of that in 2015. Maine’s dealers have responded by scrambling to find other markets.
Luke Holden, who left investment banking in 2009 to start Luke’s Lobster, a “shack” in New York’s East Village that’s since become an international restaurant chain and lobster-processing business, is worried that the tariffs and other trade effects will force structural changes in the industry. “The reality is that these tariffs have created a very long-term uphill battle,” he says, “and we’ve just started to climb that hill.”
One problem for American lobstermen is their Canadian rivals. Thanks to a trade agreement Prime Minister Justin Trudeau struck with the EU, Canadian crustaceans now land in Europe duty-free. U.S. lobsters, meanwhile, face an 8 percent tariff with no sign of imminent relief. (While Trump is discussing a limited EU deal on industrial goods, European officials have resisted including agricultural trade, which bodes badly for lobsters.)
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