A lobsterman tosses a buoy onto his boat before heading out to set traps, Thursday, May 14, 2020, in Portland, Maine.
Photo: Robert F. Bukaty/Associated PressWe hope Peter Navarro has received his updated business cards. At a meeting in Maine this month with commercial fishermen, President Trumpwas told how his trade war has devastated the state’s lobster industry. Mr. Trump said he’d get his trade adviser working on it posthaste: “Peter Navarro is going to be the Lobster King now, OK?”
In 2018 China placed a 25% retaliatory tariff on U.S. seafood products, including lobster. America’s total lobster exports to China, excluding Hong Kong, proceeded to fall to $51 million last year from $148 million in 2018, according to federal data. The tariff gave a large advantage to Canada’s lobstermen, who clamped their big red claws onto sales that used to be Maine’s.
Last week brought the first decree of Lobster King Peter I, long may he not reign over crustaceans. Mr. Trump issued a memo laying out a policy of protection for the U.S. lobster industry. China’s original retaliatory tariff of 25%, it explains, has since been raised to 30%. Add China’s usual “most favored nation” tariffs of 5% and 7%, depending on the species, and “American lobsters currently face tariffs of either 35 percent or 37 percent.”
As part of the “phase one” U.S.-China trade deal, Beijing said it would increase purchases of American products, including seafood. The White House promises to monitor Maine’s lobster exports each month for progress, while threatening “to impose reciprocal retaliatory tariffs on seafood exports from China.” Retaliation for retaliation, in other words.
Mr. Trump is also directing the Agriculture Department to consider action “to provide assistance to fishermen and producers in the United States lobster industry.” In other words, lobstermen might soon be getting the same kind of bailout money that the White House has paid to hog and soybean farmers harmed by the trade war.
But these lobstermen don’t want a handout. They want customers, and some buyers in China might never come back, even under the reign of a wiser trade sovereign. Talk about a lobster trap, which this year could cost Mr. Trump the one Maine electoral vote he won in 2016.
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All Hail the Lobster King - The Wall Street Journal
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