{"id":129179,"date":"2026-01-11T13:34:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T13:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/129179\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T13:34:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T13:34:13","slug":"louisiana-shrimper-praises-trump-tariffs-as-industry-lifeline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/129179\/","title":{"rendered":"Louisiana shrimper praises Trump tariffs as industry lifeline"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

HOUMA, La.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0For nearly 50 years, James Blanchard has made his living in the Gulf of Mexico, pulling shrimp from the sea. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

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.<\/a> They helped put three kids through college. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe amount of shrimp was not a problem,\u201d said Blanchard, a fourth-generation shrimper who routinely hauls in north of 30,000 flash-frozen pounds on a two-week trip. \u201cIt\u2019s making a profit, because the prices were so low.\u201d <\/p>\n

Then came President Trump, his tariffs<\/a> and famously itchy trigger finger.<\/a> <\/p>\n

\"Shrimper <\/p>\n

Blanchard is a lifelong Republican, but wasn\u2019t initially a big Trump fan.<\/p>\n

In April, Trump slapped a 10% fee on shrimp imports, which grew to 50% for India,<\/a> America\u2019s largest overseas source of shrimp. Further levies were imposed on Ecuador, Vietnam and Indonesia, which are other major U.S. suppliers. <\/p>\n

\"logo <\/a> <\/p>\n

Views of the 47th president, from the ground up<\/p>\n

Tariffs may slow economic growth, discombobulate markets<\/a> and boost inflation. Trump\u2019s single-handed approach to tax-and-trade policy has landed him before the Supreme Court<\/a>, which is expected to rule by summer on a major test case of presidential power.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

Blanchard snacks on a bag of dried shrimp.<\/p>\n

But for Blanchard, those tariffs have been a lifeline. He\u2019s seen a significant uptick in prices, from as low as 87 cents a pound for wild-caught shrimp to $1.50 or more. That\u2019s nowhere near the $4.50 a pound, adjusted for inflation, that U.S shrimpers earned back in the roaring 1980s, when shrimp was less common in home kitchens and something of a luxury item. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s enough, however, for Blanchard to shelve his retirement plans and for that \u2014 and Trump \u2014 he\u2019s appreciative. <\/p>\n

\u201cWriting all the bills in the world is great,\u201d he said of efforts by congressional lawmakers to prop up the country\u2019s dwindling shrimp fishermen. \u201cBut it don\u2019t get nothing done.\u201d <\/p>\n

Trump, Blanchard said, has delivered.<\/p>\n

::<\/p>\n

Shrimp is America\u2019s most popular seafood,<\/a> but that hasn\u2019t buoyed the U.S. shrimp industry. <\/p>\n

Wild-caught domestic shrimp make up less than 10% of the market. It\u2019s not a matter of quality, or overfishing. A flood of imports \u2014 farmed on a mass scale, lightly regulated by developing countries and thus cheaper to produce \u2014 has decimated the market for American shrimpers.<\/p>\n

In the Gulf and South Atlantic, warm water shrimp landings \u2014 the term the industry uses \u2014 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.) <\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A boat moves up a canal in Chauvin, La.<\/p>\n

Over the last two years, the value of the commercial shrimp fishery has fallen to $269 million in 2023 and $256 million in 2024.<\/p>\n

As the country\u2019s leading shrimp producer, Louisiana has been particularly hard hit. \u201cIt\u2019s getting to the point that we are on our knees,\u201d Acy Cooper, president of the Louisiana Shrimp Assn., recently told New Orleans television station WVUE.<\/p>\n

In the 1980s, there were more than 6,000 licensed shrimpers working in Louisiana. Today, there are fewer than 1,500. <\/p>\n

Blanchard can see the ripple effects in Houma \u2014 in the shuttered businesses, the depleted job market and the high incidence of drug overdoses.<\/p>\n

\"Latrevien <\/p>\n

Latrevien Moultrie, 14, fishes in Houma, La.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s affected everybody,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not only the boats, the infrastructure, the packing plants. It\u2019s the hardware stores. The fuel docks. The grocery stores.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two of the Blanchardses\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

(Cheri Blanchard, 64 and retired from the state labor department, keeps the books for her husband.) <\/p>\n

It turns out the federal government is at least partly responsible for the shrinking of the domestic shrimp industry. In recent years, U.S. taxpayers have subsidized overseas shrimp farming to the tune of at least $195 million in development aid. <\/p>\n

Seated at their dining room table, near a Christmas tree and other remnants of the holidays, Blanchard read from a set of scribbled notes \u2014 a Bible close at hand \u2014 as he and his wife decried the lax safety standards,<\/a> labor abuses<\/a> and environmental degradation associated with overseas shrimp farming. <\/p>\n

\"James <\/p>\n

James Blanchard and his wife, Cheri, like Trump\u2019s policies. His personality is another thing.<\/p>\n

The fact their taxes help support those practices is particularly galling. <\/p>\n

\u201cA slap in the face,\u201d Blanchard called it.<\/p>\n

::<\/p>\n

Donald Trump grew slowly on the Blanchards. <\/p>\n

The two are lifelong Republicans, but they voted for Trump in 2016<\/a> only because they considered him less bad than Hillary Clinton. <\/a> <\/p>\n

Once he took office, they were pleasantly surprised.<\/p>\n

They had more money in their pockets. Inflation wasn\u2019t an issue.<\/a> Washington seemed less heavy-handed and intrusive. By the time Trump ran for reelection,<\/a> the couple were fully on board and they happily voted for him again in 2024.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Republican <\/p>\n

Republican National Committee reading material sits on the counter of James Blanchard\u2019s kitchen.<\/p>\n

Still, there are things that irk Blanchard. He doesn\u2019t much care for Trump\u2019s brash persona<\/a> and can\u2019t stand all the childish name-calling.<\/a> For a long time, he couldn\u2019t bear listening to Trump\u2019s speeches. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou didn\u2019t ever really listen to many of Obama\u2019s speeches,\u201d Cheri interjected, and James allowed as how that was true. <\/p>\n

\u201cI liked his personality,\u201d Blanchard said of the former Democratic president. \u201cI liked his character. But I didn\u2019t like his policies.\u201d <\/p>\n

It\u2019s the opposite with Trump. <\/p>\n

Unlike most politicians, Blanchard said, when Trump says he\u2019ll do something he generally follows through. <\/p>\n

Such as tightening border security.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI have no issue at all with immigrants,\u201d he said, as his wife nodded alongside. \u201cI have an issue with illegal immigrants.\u201d (She echoed Trump in blaming Renee Good for her death last week at the hands of an ICE agent.)<\/p>\n

\u201cI have sympathy for them as families,\u201d Blanchard went on, but crossing the border doesn\u2019t make someone a U.S. citizen. \u201cIf I go down the highway 70 miles an hour in that 30-mile-an-hour zone, guess what? I\u2019m getting a ticket. … Or if I get in that car and I\u2019m drinking, guess what? They\u2019re bringing me to jail. So what\u2019s the difference?\u201d<\/p>\n

Between the two there isn\u2019t much \u2014 apart from Trump\u2019s \u201ctrolling,\u201d as Cheri called it \u2014 they find fault with.<\/p>\n

Blanchard hailed the lightning-strike capture and arrest <\/a>of Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro as another example of Trump doing and meaning exactly what he says. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Biden was in office, they had a $25-million bounty on [Maduro\u2019s] head,\u201d Blanchard said. \u201cBut apparently it was done knowing that it was never going to be enforced.\u201d<\/p>\n

More empty talk, he suggested.<\/p>\n

Just like all those years of unfulfilled promises from politicians vowing to rein in foreign competition and revive America\u2019s suffering shrimping industry. <\/p>\n

\"James <\/p>\n

James Blanchard aboard his boat, which he docks in Bayou Little Caillou.<\/p>\n

Trump and his tariffs have given Blanchard back his livelihood and for that alone he\u2019s grateful. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s maintenance and repair work to be done on his boat \u2014 named Waymaker, to honor the Lord \u2014 before Blanchard musters his two-man crew and sets out from Bayou Little Caillou. <\/p>\n

He can hardly wait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUMA, La.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0For nearly 50 years, James Blanchard has made his living in the Gulf of Mexico, pulling shrimp…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7625,66509,66504,66510,9342,14063,66507,384,48,52,51,47,50,49,66508,5990,66505,1519,66506,4609,72],"class_list":["post-129179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-america","tag-bayou-country","tag-blanchard","tag-cheri","tag-daughter","tag-fee","tag-industry-lifeline","tag-inflation","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-louisiana-shrimper","tag-market","tag-shrimp","tag-trump","tag-trump-tariff","tag-wife","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}