Trump may be abrasive, but tariffs save fisherman

For nearly 50 years, James Blanchard has made his living in the Gulf of Mexico, pulling shrimp from the sea. It's all he ever wanted to do, since he was around 12 years old and accompanied his father, a mailman and part-time shrimper, as he spent weekends trawling the marshy waters off Louisiana. Blanchard loved the adventure and splendid isolation. He made a good living, even as the industry collapsed around him. He and his wife, Cheri, bought a comfortable home in a tidy subdivision here in the heart of Bayou Country. They helped put three kids through college. But eventually Blanchard began to contemplate his forced retirement, selling his 63-foot boat and hanging up his wall of big green fishing nets once he turns 65 in February.

"The amount of shrimp was not a problem," said Blanchard, a fourth-generation shrimper who routinely hauls in north of 30,000 flash-frozen pounds on a two-week trip. "It's making a profit, because the prices were so low." Then came President Donald Trump, his tariffs and famously itchy trigger finger. In April, Trump slapped a 10% fee on shrimp imports, which grew to 50% for India, America's largest overseas source of shrimp. Further levies were imposed on Ecuador, Vietnam and Indonesia, which are other major US suppliers.

Tariffs may slow economic growth, discombobulate markets and boost inflation. Trump's single-handed approach to tax-and-trade policy has landed him before the Supreme Court, which is expected to rule by summer on a major test case of presidential power. But for Blanchard, those tariffs have been a lifeline. He's seen a significant uptick in prices, from as low as 87 cents a pound for wild-caught shrimp to $1.50 or more. That's nowhere near the $4.50 a pound, adjusted for inflation, that US shrimpers earned back in the roaring 1980s, when shrimp was less common in home kitchens and something of a luxury item. It's enough, however, for Blanchard to shelve his retirement plans and for that — and Trump — he's appreciative. "Writing all the bills in the world is great," he said of efforts by congressional lawmakers to prop up the country's dwindling shrimp fishermen. "But it don't get nothing done."

Trump, Blanchard said, has delivered.

Shrimp is America's most popular seafood, but that hasn't buoyed the US shrimp industry. Wild-caught domestic shrimp make up less than 10% of the market. It's not a matter of quality, or overfishing. A flood of imports — farmed on a mass scale, lightly regulated by developing countries and thus cheaper to produce — has decimated the market for American shrimpers. In the Gulf and South Atlantic, warm water shrimp landings — the term the industry uses — had an average annual value of more than $460 million between 1975 and 2022, according to the Southern Shrimp Alliance, a trade group. (Those numbers are not adjusted for inflation.)

Over the last two years, the value of the commercial shrimp fishery has fallen to $269 million in 2023 and $256 million in 2024.

As the country's leading shrimp producer, Louisiana has been particularly hard hit. "It's getting to the point that we are on our knees," Acy Cooper, president of the Louisiana Shrimp Assn., recently told New Orleans television station WVUE. In the 1980s, there were more than 6,000 licensed shrimpers working in Louisiana. Today, there are fewer than 1,500. Blanchard can see the ripple effects in Houma — in the shuttered businesses, the depleted job market and the high incidence of drug overdoses. "It's affected everybody," he said. "It's not only the boats, the infrastructure, the packing plants. It's the hardware stores. The fuel docks. The grocery stores."

Two of the Blanchards' three children have moved away, seeking opportunity elsewhere. One daughter is a university law professor. Their son works in logistics for a trucking company in Georgia. Their other daughter, who lives near the couple, applies her advanced degree in school psychology as a stay-at-home mother of five. (Cheri Blanchard, 64 and retired from the state labor department, keeps the books for her husband.) It turns out the federal government is at least partly responsible for the shrinking of the domestic shrimp industry. In recent years, US taxpayers have subsidised overseas shrimp farming to the tune of at least $195 million in development aid. Seated at their dining room table, near a Christmas tree and other remnants of the holidays, Blanchard read from a set of scribbled notes — a Bible close at hand — as he and his wife decried the lax safety standards, labor abuses and environmental degradation associated with overseas shrimp farming.

The fact their taxes help support those practices is particularly galling. "A slap in the face," Blanchard called it.

Donald Trump grew slowly on the Blanchards. The two are lifelong Republicans, but they voted for Trump in 2016 only because they considered him less bad than Hillary Clinton. Once he took office, they were pleasantly surprised. They had more money in their pockets. Inflation wasn't an issue. Washington seemed less heavy-handed and intrusive. By the time Trump ran for reelection, the couple were fully on board and they happily voted for him again in 2024.

Still, there are things that irk Blanchard. He doesn't much care for Trump's brash persona and can't stand all the childish name-calling. For a long time, he couldn't bear listening to Trump's speeches. "You didn't ever really listen to many of Obama's speeches," Cheri interjected, and James allowed as how that was true. "I liked his personality," Blanchard said of the former Democratic president. "I liked his character. But I didn't like his policies." It's the opposite with Trump. Unlike most politicians, Blanchard said, when Trump says he'll do something he generally follows through. Such as tightening border security.

"I have no issue at all with immigrants," he said, as his wife nodded alongside. "I have an issue with illegal immigrants." (She echoed Trump in blaming Renee Good for her death last week at the hands of an ICE agent.) "I have sympathy for them as families," Blanchard went on, but crossing the border doesn't make someone a US citizen. "If I go down the highway 70 miles an hour in that 30-mile-an-hour zone, guess what? I'm getting a ticket... Or if I get in that car and I'm drinking, guess what? They're bringing me to jail. So what's the difference?" Between the two there isn't much — apart from Trump's "trolling," as Cheri called it — they find fault with. Blanchard hailed the lightning-strike capture and arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as another example of Trump doing and meaning exactly what he says.

"When Biden was in office, they had a $25-million bounty on (Maduro's) head," Blanchard said. "But apparently it was done knowing that it was never going to be enforced."

More empty talk, he suggested. Just like all those years of unfulfilled promises from politicians vowing to rein in foreign competition and revive America's suffering shrimping industry. Trump and his tariffs have given Blanchard back his livelihood and for that alone he's grateful. There's maintenance and repair work to be done on his boat — named Waymaker, to honor the Lord — before Blanchard musters his two-man crew and sets out from Bayou Little Caillou. He can hardly wait.