Why do shrimpers like tariffs?

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0:52Americans love shrimp. In fact, we eat shrimp more than any other seafood. I guess I am the exception here because I don't love shrimp. Oh, come on, Adrian. I mean, like what, like no shrimp scampi, no shrimp fried rice, not even a shrimp taco? Yeah, not so much. I think it's a textural thing. Like it has a bounciness that doesn't quite jive with me. Oh, bouncy. That's not something I heard on Top Chef before. Uh, yeah. But it is true that Americans eat a lot of shrimp, about six pounds per person each year. That is literally hundreds of shrimp a person. All that shrimp love makes it all the more surprising that the Americans who actually catch shrimp are disappearing.

1:36There were less than 1 ,500 shrimpers in Louisiana last year. A quarter of a century earlier, there were nearly 7 ,000 according to state records. And a large reason for this drop is cheap imported shrimp. U.S. shrimpers say they just can't afford to compete. Which is why a lot of those shrimpers are huge fans of tariffs. This is The Indicator for Planet Money. I'm Adrian Ma. And today, we're on another road trip with friend of the show, Stephen Basaha from the Gulf States Newsroom. Always happy to play tour guide. And today we are off to the Louisiana Bayou. We'll meet a shrimper who will tell us why this industry is the rare one celebrating tariffs.

2:19And we ask a seafood economist if this is the kind of tariff they can support. So let's get sizzling. Or bouncing. Yeah, bounce along down.

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4:07That's grammarly.com slash podcast. Shrimping is one of these jobs that you're kind of born into. Yeah, it's in your blood is how A.C. Cooper described it. A.C. can count back four generations of shrimping in his family and actually raised his own kids on his baby blue boat, the Lacey K. My wife was my deckhand and would bring the kids on the boat in them little plastic swimming pools and they would swim in the daytime and then at night my wife would dry it out. and put all three a minute, and they would sleep in the little swimming pool under the bow. That way they wouldn't get wet while we worked.

4:46So you can see for A.C., shrimping is a family affair. He even named his boat the Lacey Kay after his wife and daughter. Now, his boat is docked at a harbor in the Louisiana bayou. And he says he can remember a time when there were about 20 boats around. But today... We're on the end of the pier right where it starts at. These dores used to be full. And if you look at them now, there's two boats that's tied up on the other side of me and there's nobody else behind us. Nobody. AC blames its decline on shrimp imported from countries like Ecuador, India and Vietnam. And in fact, an investigation by the U.S.

5:21International Trade Commission found those countries subsidized their shrimp exports. That pushed down the price of shrimp and harmed U.S. shrimpers. Now, towards the end of the Biden administration, they put targeted tariffs on shrimp from those countries. And when President Donald Trump announced his additional global tariffs, shrimpers like AC celebrated. Oh, we're jumping. You know, we definitely support it. There's no doubt we support him 100 % on this issue. Now, we have done a lot of stories talking to economists about how tariffs can harm workers and businesses. But we wanted to see if this was a case of an exception, a case where economists could say that this is actually a correct way to use tariffs.

6:03So, Stephen, you actually called up a seafood economist. How do you like your shrimp? Sadly, I'm allergic to shrimp. Oh, no! I know. It's devastating. Sounds like a professional hazard. That is Martin Smith. And despite his allergy, he is, in fact, a seafood economist at Duke University. Now, Martin does agree with the shrimpers that the main thing harming their industry is foreign imports. The real price, so in economics, when we talk about real prices, we're inflation adjusting. The real price of shrimp is dramatically lower today than it was 40 years ago. We checked, and yeah, the real price of shrimp today is about 40 % lower than it was at the start of the 90s.

6:48But while Martin and AC might agree on the cause of the problem, they don't agree on the solution. Because along with shellfish, Martin has another allergy. This one, the tariffs. Tariffs are just the wrong way to go about it. We often talk about the toll of tariffs on the American wallet. Martin says we should also be considering their toll on the American diet. And he says that's because seafood is a rich source of protein that can reduce the risk of heart disease. And Americans should be eating more of it. Our vegetarian friends, y 'all get a pass on this one. But in general, Americans aren't getting their two weekly servings of seafood the USDA recommends.

7:27We love our shrimp. We love our salmon. We eat a lot of it. We still fall short of the USDA dietary guidelines on seafood consumption. So, Adrian, I know you're skipping the shrimp, but are you getting your, you know, two weekly servings of seafood in another way? I don't think so. But on the upside, I guess that means I'm like not getting my daily dose of microplastics either. I'm sure they're finding their other ways into the system. It's probably true. Yeah. Well, I have been working on getting better at eating more seafood. And honestly, the cheap price of shrimp has helped. Yeah, I read that one shrimper actually called this trend the chickenization of shrimp.

8:07Yeah, shrimp has really gone from this luxury purchase to a common buy, which is why Martin says raising the price of shrimp with tariffs would be bad for Americans' health, even if a price hike would help shrimpers. You're going to drive up prices and you're going to drive down seafood consumption. And that's going to be bad for cardiovascular health and overall the health of Americans. And if it sounds like at this point that we are straying away from economics, what we're really talking about here are the tradeoffs between free trade and protectionism. The tradeoff between cheaper products for the American consumer versus shielding the American worker.

8:44American shrimpers say this goes beyond free trade. They say for the last 50 years, international development groups like the World Bank funded and propped up international shrimp farming. The goal was to create jobs and boost the economies of countries in Asia and South America. The U.S. is the largest shareholder for the World Bank. So American shrimpers say their own country is supporting the very foreign competition they're struggling against. Yeah, Martin says this competition is actually just another tradeoff when trying to develop the economies of other countries. I mean, this is a little bit of a philosophical question.

9:21Is there no case to be made that we should share some of what we have with people who are so desperately poor that we can barely even imagine it? Does it make sense for the world to collectively work on developing new technologies that can help to feed people? My answer to that is yes. I'm an economist. I'm looking at the big picture. Are there winners and losers when you do these sorts of things? Absolutely. This is also the phrase that economists often use to describe the consequences of free trade. There are winners and losers. Gulf Coast shrimpers have been on the losing end of that equation for a long while.

10:02A.C. Cooper has fought for more than 20 years to change that and now believes there's the right man in the White House to make it happen. Hopefully Trump does it. You know, I voted for him. I voted for him the first time. I was a Democrat. I changed my party. I went to Republican. I'm not, I can't sit here and watch what's going on in this country and think it's going to be okay because it's not. What AC really wants as a long-term fix is a cap on shrimp imports. Don't let them bring in to where they overwhelm us. And look, everybody needs to make money. I understand that. But you can't just take it and just kick us aside and say you're not worthy enough of having your job to make a living.

10:43You've got to find something else. We're going to stand up for what we believe in, and we're doing that. But a lot of shrimpers have not been able to stick it out. For example, A.C. says one of his sons, you know, one of the boys he raised on his shrimping boat that was playing in the little kiddie pool, that son had to leave the business because, AC says, he could no longer support his family financially shrimping.

11:12This episode was produced by Lily Quiroz with help from Drew Hawkins. It was engineered by Maggie Luthar and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Cake and Cannon edits the show in the Indicators production of NPR.

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