Walking into the Thomas M. Menino Convention & Exhibition Center in Boston, you can smell the seafood. Which makes sense given that it’s hosting the country’s largest wholesale seafood expo. Suppliers from around the world dole out samples of fresh sashimi, crispy fish sticks, and seaweed salad.
“It’s sweet, and it’s a little bit spicy, and it’s a compliment to meat or heavier stuff,” said Camille Zhu, who runs a seaweed company on the coast of Shandong province in Northern China.
She began selling to the U.S. just last year and said it’s been hard with all the trade tensions and tariffs. But she’s confident in her product.
“People are starting to accept seaweed as a source of nutrition, and they’re looking for a healthy diet,” she said. “And with the popularity of Japanese cuisine, yeah, it’s getting pretty big for us.”
About 80% of seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported. Some of the biggest suppliers —including China and India — have seen some of the highest tariffs from the Trump administration in the past year. All that has thrown the global seafood trade into chaos.
A fisherman unloads baskets of fish for sale in Southeastern India.
R. Satish Babu/AFP via Getty Images
Even though the Supreme Court has struck down tariffs put in place under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, other tariffs remain in place, and seafood suppliers are still reeling.
In the convention hall, other Chinese seafood sellers besides Zhu were less upbeat. Jianlong Wang’s company processes squid and scallops, also in Shandong province.
Buyers in the U.S. provided almost all his revenue, he said. “90% of our products will be exported to America.”
But Wang said his customers, including U.S. retailers, walked away when tariffs soared in the middle of last year. “In maybe July, August, our company just stopped. Stopped, yes. It’s a huge difficulty for us.”
He’s since been able to restart production, finding some buyers in Canada. But sales are still way down. I heard similar stories from sellers based in India, which is the biggest supplier of shrimp to the U.S.; they say they lost around half their business. That loss of supply is one reason the cost of shrimp has risen by more than 50 cents a pound, per Angel Rubio, an economist with Expana.
The cost of shrimp, the most-consumed seafood in the U.S., is up more than 50 cents a pound.
Nadja Wohlleben/Getty Images
“In the case of shrimp, we are at the highest price in at least five years, to the consumer,” he said.
Rubio said domestic producers simply can’t meet demand. Shrimp is the most-consumed seafood in the U.S.
“There are more like land-based farms here in the U.S. that are coming up, but they wouldn’t be able to replace the volume from overseas,” said Rubio.
Meanwhile, many of those overseas producers have their fingers crossed for an easier year ahead.
Jianlong Wang, the squid and scallop processor in China, has his hopes pinned on one particular event: “I know that Donald Trump will visit China next month.”
Wang added that a one-on-one meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping could ease tensions and stabilize the seafood trade. But as of this week, that summit has been delayed with no make-up date announced.
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