19
Standing on the deck of the Captain Carl,
his 34-ft. lobster boat, Jeff Woodman reflects on
how the rocky shores of Spruce Head, Maine,
have become an unlikely front line in two very
different fights: President Donald Trump’s global
tariff wars and America’s battle against the
coronavirus. “Lobstering has
been a family business. I’m third-
generation,” says Woodman.
“But it’s changing.”
Maine’s lobster sales are
sinking fast. China was the
industry’s best customer until
2018, when Beijing retaliated for
U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods by
slapping a 25% levy on the elite
treat, while reducing its tariff on
Canadian catches. As the Trump
Administration has faced off with
the E.U., Europe also has been
buying more lobster from Canada.
By early this year, Maine’s
year-on-year lobster exports
to China and Europe had both
dropped by about 50%.
The market for Homarus
americanus had shrunk to little
more than domestic consumers
and a limited number of wealthy
epicures in Asia and the Middle
East, says Annie Tselikis, execu-
tive director of the Maine Lob-
ster Dealers’ Association. “Then
comes COVID,” Tselikis says.
The major U.S. buyers of
Maine lobster, from casinos to
cruise ships, all shut down. The
state’s lobstermen and women
are still venturing out, but about a third have re-
ceived nearly $15 million in federal Paycheck Pro-
tection Program loans to help them cope with
COVID-19- related losses.
Mainers aren’t used to being caught in na-
tional crises. Despite the long tradition of Beltway
residents flocking to the state each summer, Amer-
ica’s Vacationland has an ambivalent relationship
with the federal government. Policies devised with
good intentions in the Capitol haven’t always sur-
vived the voyage Down East as well as a plane full
of live lobster can travel in a “cloud pack”—tails
How Maine and its
lobsters got caught
in America’s crises
By John Walcott/Spruce Head, Maine
down, claws up—from Spruce Head to Europe.
But this year national politics has come to
Maine, where one of Congress’s toughest races is
playing out ahead of Nov. 3. Republican Senator
Susan Collins is locked in a tight contest with her
opponent, Democrat Sara Gideon. With control
of the Senate at stake, one of the nation’s least
populous states has assumed outsize political
importance—and so have its lobsters. On June 5,
Trump visited the city of Bangor and threatened to
slap a new tariff on European cars if the Europeans
didn’t immediately eliminate theirs on U.S.
lobsters. On June 24, he ordered the Agriculture
Department to offer the lobster
industry a bailout like those
given to farmers caught in his
trade war with China.
So far, those efforts only
appear to have validated
decades of local skepticism
about Washington. The
state’s politicians have found
themselves tutoring government
bureaucrats more familiar
with corn than crustaceans,
while they try to understand
why they’re trapped in a
battle over China’s poaching
of American technology. Not
only have Maine’s lobster sales
plummeted, keeping a lobster
business running has become
harder as Trump’s tariff wars
have escalated, says Woodman.
Bait and fuel have become more
expensive, he says, as have digital
water thermometers and satellite
technology. Lobster pots, now
made of steel instead of wood,
cost $70 to $90 each, thanks
in part to Trump’s tariffs on
Canadian steel, he says.
The influx of PPP loans has
helped some. According to the
Small Business Administration,
about 1,360 Maine lobstermen—about 1 in 3—
have received loans of less than $150,000. But
as in other industries, the biggest players got
more from the federal trough. Four of the state’s
largest lobster companies hauled in $350,000 to
$1 million, according to the SBA.
Everyone else, including Woodman, is learning
to adapt. He now ships his catch over the border to
Canada, which then sells them, tariff-free, to China
and Europe. He is also capitalizing on the market
for frozen lobster, usually tail and claw meat, but
now also entire crustaceans. “Everybody,” Wood-
man says, “is trying to think outside the box.” •
TheBrief Nation
TRISTAN SPINSKI—THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX
△
Mike Hutchings,
who has fished
off Maine’s coast
for over 50 years,
harvests lobsters
near Lincolnville
on June 27
