Saving shrimpers: Industry cheers proposed legislation, Trump tariffs

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House Resolution 2071, the Save Our Shrimpers Act, has been reintroduced in Congress in an effort to prohibit federal funding from going to international financial institutions that finance foreign shrimp farms.

The Rio Grande Valley-based shrimp industry, and the rest of the domestic industry, hope it becomes law in light of the fact that U.S. shrimpers have been brought to their knees by unrelenting waves of cheap, foreign exports flooding the market and driving prices down past the point of sustainability.

The legislation, which has bipartisan support, was first introduced in 2024 by Reps. Clay Higgins, R-Louisiana, and Troy Nehls, R-Texas, with the aim of prohibiting federal funds from going to international financial institutions (IFTs) that subsidize any aspect of foreign nations’ shrimp industries. Such subsidies make it even more difficult for Gulf shrimpers to compete and stay in business.

Maria Barrera-Jaross, executive director of the Brownsville-headquartered Texas Shrimp Association (TSA), said her understanding is that U.S. funding to ITFs wasn’t supposed to support competitor countries’ aquaculture industries, though some portion of it has wound up doing so anyway, and it’s difficult if not possible to police.

Still, as a hearing of the U.S. International Trade Commission last year clearly underlined, imported farm-raised shrimp is so cheap because “other countries are subsidizing their fisheries and dumping their product on the U.S. market.”

“It’s all unchecked basically,” she said. “We’re fighting this fight on so many different fronts. It’s difficult. This is just one more challenge that we’re facing.”

Anything that would help stem the tide of cheap imports into the United States would help the Gulf shrimp industry, Barrera-Jaross said, noting that the Save Our Shrimpers Act, which was reintroduced March 11, is backed by Republicans and Democrats, including Reps. Vicente Gonzalez, D-Brownsvlle, and Troy Carter of Louisiana.

At the ITC hearing held in October, TSA President Chris Londrie testified that farm-raised imports were having a “devastating impact” on domestic shrimpers.

“We hope the ITC will rule to impose appropriate and significant tariffs and countervailing duties on the top four importers, India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Ecuador, of farm-raised shrimp to help level the playing field on trade,” he said.

Londrie pointed out during his testimony that the ITC published a report in 1976 that found that the U.S. shrimping industry “is suffering serious injury for increased imports of shrimp.”

That report recommended that import relief be provided in the form of “adjustment assistance” for the domestic shrimp industry catching and landing shrimp, he noted.

“Fifty years later we are still fighting that same fight,” Londrie testified. “The difference is that then imports made up 52% of U.S. consumption. Today shrimp imports make up 96% of U.S. consumption. So much shrimp is being dumped into the U.S. market, 1.86 billion pounds, that it actually exceeds the average amount consumed by Americans which is estimated at 1.6 billion pounds. This has dramatically caused the price of shrimp to drop considerably.”

On Nov. 19, the ITC announced its determination that the U.S. shrimp industry is being “materially injured” by shrimp imports from Indonesia being sold below fair market value according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, and by shrimp imports from Ecuador, India and Vietnam that the department said are being heavily subsidized by the governments of those countries.

As a result of the ITC’s determinations, the Commerce Department said it would “countervailing duty orders on imports of this product from Ecuador, India and Vietnam and an anti-dumping duty order on imports of this product from Indonesia.”

Soon thereafter came the reelection of Donald Trump as president and this week’s announcements of sweeping tariffs, which caused the U.S. stock market to immediately crash amid fears of rising inflation, slowing growth and heightened chances of recession. The tariffs have been met with alarm on a global scale, not least among U.S. allies and the country’s biggest trading partners, while China is pushing back hard with tariffs of its own on U.S. products.

A number of economists and analysts say the formula the Trump administration is using to justify tariffs imposed on individual countries is based on nonsensical math and a fundamental misunderstanding of international trade. Trump insists U.S. markets will begin booming and investors arriving in droves as a result of the tariffs.

In any case, officials representing the domestic shrimp industry are ecstatic. Indonesia, Ecuador, India and Vietnam are being hit with tariffs of 32%, 10%, 26% and 46%, respectively, while tariffs of 10% and 36%, respectively, are being imposed on imports from the shrimp-producing nations of Argentina and Thailand.

John Williams, executive director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance, said that for too long “we’ve watched as multi-generational family businesses tie up their boats, unable to compete with foreign producers who play by a completely different set of rules.”

“We are grateful for the Trump administration’s actions, which will preserve American jobs, food security and our commitment to ethical production,” he said.

The U.S. Shrimpers Coalition likewise affirmed Trump’s decision, which puts tariffs on imported seafood along with other products from the targeted countries.

“While we acknowledge that this action may result in short-term price increases for consumers, we believe it is a necessary step to rectify the severe trade imbalance that has crippled the American shrimping industry,” the USSC said.

“The domestic wild-caught shrimp industry has been struggling for a long time due to the trade and labor practices of foreign countries who import farm-raised shrimp into the U.S.,” Londrie said.

“These newly proposed tariffs could make a significant difference in helping to level the playing field when it comes to largely uninspected farm-raised shrimp entering the U.S. market.

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