Acy Cooper, President of the Louisiana Shrimp Association, joined the Newell Normand Show to explain how Louisiana shrimpers are applauding Trump's tariffs (most of which have been put on a 90-day pause), hoping they'll level the playing field with foreign shrimp exporters who cut corners to keep costs down.
An average of 94% of seafood consumed in the United States is imported from other countries.
Cooper explains the reason is twofold: The first is that foreign companies have virtually no labor or environmental standards, and the second is that the United States has very poor food safety practices with seafood.
“They use slave labor, women labor, and child labor," Cooper says. "They're not playing by the books that we play by. We have a lot of rules, and it's a lot harder to do business here in the States than it is to do in foreign countries. They have no value for their land, they have no value for their ecosystem, and they're just ruining everything...They’re driving our prices down, we're losing our industry. You know, we used to be a $2.4 billion industry. Last year was probably $1.2 billion.”
How does this happen? According to Cooper, the FDA allows almost all foreign seafood exports to enter without proper testing.
“Tainted shrimp is coming in without being tested,” says Cooper. “I agree with Kennedy that food safety ought to be number one in this country, and it's not. It's a problem because you see all the health risks in the United States compared to other countries. The UK tests 50%. We test less than 2%. And everything the UK turns around and is going to come straight to us.”
The hope is that Trump’s potential tariffs on countries like Ecuador, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand will increase the demand for American-grown seafood without bringing up costs.
To hear the full interview, click the player above.
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