Canadian lobster exports to China leap

China, a huge growing market for lobster, imposed heavy tariffs on American lobster – and many other food products – in July 2018, amid mounting commercial hostilities between Chinese authorities and the Trump administration .

Meanwhile, business is booming in Canada, with cargo planes arriving in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Moncton, New Brunswick, to benefit from growing export growth. Canadian fishermen catch the same species of lobster as American lobster, which works primarily in Maine.

The loss of business led to layoffs in some Maine companies, such as The Lobster Company, in Arundel, where owner Stephanie Nadeau laid off half of the 14 people she employed in the wholesale trade.

They chose winners and losers, and they determined that I was a loser. No market will replace China.

In Canada, exports to China up to June were already close to 33 million pounds, nearly the same as for all of 2018.

The value of Canadian exports was about $ 265 million in the first half of the year, and it is almost certain that it will exceed last year's total of more than $ 295 million.

US exports from January to June were valued at less than $ 25 million and were over $ 92 million behind the value of the first six months of 2018.

The United States exported less than 2.2 million pounds of lobster to China from January to June this year, according to data from the US federal government. The country had exported nearly 12 million pounds during the same period last year. It's a drop of more than 80%.

Concerns

In Canada, this increase in demand has helped the industry, but has also sowed uncertainty about its future, according to Geoff Irvine, Executive Director of the Canadian Lobster Council.

The American and Canadian lobster industries overlap, with some companies operating on both sides of the border, and it is more beneficial for the lobster industry as a whole to continue to trade freely, he said. highlighted.

Whenever there is some kind of uncertainty, people are worried. Everyone would like to see the entire lobster industry open and free.

Lobster prices paid by US consumers have remained relatively stable during the trade dispute, and there are still many buyers for American lobster.

But the loss of China as a foreign market occurs at the end of a decade in which the US seafood industry has experienced exponential growth in lobster exports to that country. The United States exported about 800,000 pounds of lobster to China in 2010, which was multiplied by more than 20 times last year.

The US lobster industry is looking to open new domestic and international markets to offset the loss of China, said Marianne LaCroix, director of a collaborative lobster marketing group in Maine.

Lobster fisherman Brian Rapp of Maine will attend a trade show in Hong Kong and a trade mission to Dubai in September to promote American lobster, she said.

China is so vast that you have to consider several new markets to replace this businessMs. LaCroix added.