MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Americans eat more shrimp than any other seafood, but Americans who catch shrimp are increasingly rare. They blame that on cheap imports and hope tariffs could help the industry here survive. Stephan Bisaha of the Gulf States Newsroom has this report.
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STEPHAN BISAHA, BYLINE: Shrimping is not really the kind of field you just stumble into on career day.
ACY COOPER: You know, it's in your blood.
BISAHA: Acy Cooper says it's a physical job. He could count back to four generations of shrimping in his family. He actually raised his kids on his baby blue boat, the Lacy Kay.
COOPER: My wife was my deckhand and would bring the kids on the boat, and I'd - one of 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 of them in it, and they would sleep in the little swimming pool under the bow. That way, they wouldn't get wet while we worked.
BISAHA: The Lacy Kay is docked at a boat harbor in the Louisiana bayou. Cooper says there used to be about 20 boats here. Not anymore.
COOPER: We're on the end of the pier, right where it starts at. And if you look down the pier, all these stalls used to have boats in them. Just - these stalls used to be full. And if you look down them now, there's two boats that's tied up on the other side. I mean, there's nobody else behind us. Nobody.
BISAHA: There were about five times fewer shrimpers in Louisiana last year compared to 2000, according to state data. Cooper says that's due to cheap imported shrimp. An investigation by the U.S. International Trade Commission found that Ecuador, India and Vietnam subsidized their shrimp exports. That pushed down the price and harmed U.S. shrimpers. So the Biden administration put targeted tariffs on shrimp from those countries. And when Trump announced his additional global tariffs, shrimpers like Cooper celebrated.
COOPER: Oh, we're jumping. You know, we definitely support it. There's no doubt we support him a hundred percent on this issue.
BISAHA: But limiting foreign shrimp could worsen a health concern that Americans already don't eat enough seafood. Experts say many of us who are not vegetarian aren't eating the recommended two servings per week.
MARTIN SMITH: We 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.
BISAHA: Martin Smith's a seafood economist at Duke University and not a fan of tariffs. He goes as far to say that they could lead to more than higher prices.
SMITH: You're going to drive down seafood consumption, and that's going to be bad for cardiovascular health and overall the health of Americans.
BISAHA: Smith says what often gets said when defending free trade - there are winners and losers. Gulf Coast shrimpers have been on the losing end of that equation for a long while. Acy Cooper has been fighting for more than 20 years to change that, and now believes there's the right man in the White House to make it happen.
COOPER: 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.
BISAHA: One of Cooper's sons has already left the business. He said he can no longer support his family as a shrimper.
For NPR News, I'm Stephan Bisaha. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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