Trump tariffs skewer India’s shrimp exports : NPR

[ad_1] <img src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/3000x2000+0+0/resize/1100/quality/50/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fe9%2Fa8%2F35523c5b4f859b10d558a8651bd1%2Fmg-8217.jpg" data-template="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/3000x2000+0+0/resize/{width}/quality/{quality}/format/{format}/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fe9%2Fa8%2F35523c5b4f859b10d558a8651bd1%2Fmg-8217.jpg" class="img" alt="Mounds of dried shrimp sit at India's port of Visakhapatnam, where much of the economy is based around seafood exports — chiefly frozen shrimp to the U.S." fetchpriority="high"/> Mounds of dried shrimp sit at India's port of Visakhapatnam, the place a lot of the economic system relies round seafood exports — mainly frozen shrimp to the U.S. Diaa Hadid/NPR conceal caption

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Diaa Hadid/NPR VISAKHAPATNAM, India — America's love affair with shrimp is a cultural touchstone, sufficient that The Each day Present might air a number of segments out of Pink Lobster's $11 million loss after it provided a $20 limitless shrimp buffet in 2023 that proved to be too well-liked.

Actually, Individuals eat extra shrimp than every other seafood, about 5.5 kilos per individual, per 12 months, and about 40% of it comes from India. Indian shrimp exports to the U.S. totaled greater than $2.5 billion within the 2023-24 fiscal 12 months, in accordance with the Indian Ministry of Commerce.

At the least, it used to return from India. The business has been skewered by President Trump's tariffs utilized on many Indian sectors. They have been initially set at 25% in August, then doubled, weeks later, to 50%, to punish the Indian authorities of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for being one of many world's largest purchasers of Russian oil.

Inside India, the jap state of Andhra Pradesh is especially uncovered, as a result of a lot of its shrimp — someplace between 75% to 85% — was exported for the U.S., in accordance with an business guidebook that used 2023 figures.

<img src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/3000x2000+0+0/resize/1100/quality/50/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F78%2F92%2Fe2c71d0c4228bfd2ff0e0595dcc8%2Fmg-8263.jpg" data-template="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/3000x2000+0+0/resize/{width}/quality/{quality}/format/{format}/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F78%2F92%2Fe2c71d0c4228bfd2ff0e0595dcc8%2Fmg-8263.jpg" class="img" alt="Port workers toss baskets of ice to keep catch fresh at the port of Visakhapatnam." loading="lazy"/> Port staff toss baskets of ice to maintain catch recent on the port of Visakhapatnam. Diaa Hadid/NPR conceal caption

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Diaa Hadid/NPR These feeling the impacts embody Sita, who returned residence after one more unsuccessful hunt for a brand new job on a latest August day.

For the previous decade, Sita had near-daily shifts in a shrimp processing plant across the nook, within the far-flung suburb of Marikavalasa. However she says her supervisor informed her in July to attend for his name: "We've not heard from him since," Sita stated.

Sita is a single mom to 2 teenage boys. She informed NPR that she paused her sons' training for now, as a result of she could not afford to pay their personal faculty charges. She frightened about making hire, and paying again the $100 mortgage she took out in August to cowl bills. "If they do not give us work," she stated, referring to the close by shrimp processing plant, "how are we meant to outlive?"

<img src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/3000x2000+0+0/resize/1100/quality/50/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fd2%2F21%2F2d126ce64fa9983953b3c2292597%2Fmg-8225.jpg" data-template="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/3000x2000+0+0/resize/{width}/quality/{quality}/format/{format}/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fd2%2F21%2F2d126ce64fa9983953b3c2292597%2Fmg-8225.jpg" class="img" alt="Fishwives sell mounds of dried fish and shrimp at the port of Visakhapatnam, where much of the economy is based around seafood exports — chiefly frozen shrimp to the U.S. India’s shrimp is a $5 billion dollar export market — much of it cleaned, frozen and packed and exported to the U.S. - where it once formed two out of every five pounds for shrimp in America. But after President Trump imposed 25% tariffs on India, and then doubled it, Indian shrimp industry businesses say they’ve been priced out of the market. The industry had long been under scrutiny for its exploitative labor conditions, its environmental impacts, and for human rights abuses related to the industry, like land theft. Image by Diaa Hadid, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India, August 2025." loading="lazy"/> Fishwives promote mounds of dried fish and shrimp on the port of Visakhapatnam, India. Diaa Hadid/NPR conceal caption

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Diaa Hadid/NPR She was one among a few dozen ladies who informed NPR in Visakhapatnam that they hadn't had a shift in weeks, or that they had their hours curtailed. The ladies solely gave their first names, frightened that they'd lose their jobs for good in the event that they have been recognized.

The business employs over 1,000,000 folks and includes dozens of export corporations, greater than 450 shrimp hatcheries, greater than 50 feed mills, particular person middlemen and about 100,000 shrimp farms, most of them small enterprises. However it's the greater than 240 processing crops that provide the majority of employment. That is the place ladies like Sita say they stand from morning to night, dealing with ice-cold shrimp to organize it for packaging.

On a latest night within the village of Bheemunipatnam in Andhra Pradesh, a few dozen ladies gathered on a neighbor's porch informed NPR that they have been paid about $100 a month, the luckiest, round $220, to work in close by shrimp crops.

One girl, Chinni, described the work as depressing. "Most of us who work on the processing plant face well being points," she stated. "Now we have swollen ft," she stated. Backaches. Joint ache. However Chinni stated a day without work was a day with out pay — and the shrimp processing plant was the one dependable work on the town. So Chinni informed NPR the ladies popped painkillers and continued working.

Their accounts echo stories by rights teams and investigative journalists into India's shrimp business, which discovered widespread underpayment, exploitation of weak migrants and even pressured labor. The investigations additionally discovered farmers have been extensively utilizing antibiotics to develop shrimp sooner, and in additional concentrated numbers.

NPR additionally met feminine rice farmers who accused a strong, politically linked strongman of seizing their land and changing it to shrimp ponds within the Indian state of West Bengal. The ladies, who spoke to NPR in Might 2024, have been from the Sandeshkhali district of the Sundarbans, the world's largest contiguous mangrove forest, an space best for shrimp farming.

<img src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/3000x2000+0+0/resize/1100/quality/50/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F83%2F15%2F1c1eb4dd40e5902750013b74b892%2Fmg-1595.jpg" data-template="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/3000x2000+0+0/resize/{width}/quality/{quality}/format/{format}/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F83%2F15%2F1c1eb4dd40e5902750013b74b892%2Fmg-1595.jpg" class="img" alt="Women in the village of Sandeshkhali in the Indian state of West Bengal in May 2024. The women say their lands were seized by a local strongman who broke the dyke that protects their low-lying land from saline sea water, destroying their rice paddies and rendering the land infertile. The man then converted the lands into a shrimp ponds." loading="lazy"/> Ladies within the village of Sandeshkhali within the Indian state of West Bengal in Might 2024. The ladies say their lands have been seized by a neighborhood strongman who broke the dyke that protects their low-lying land from saline sea water, destroying their rice paddies and rendering the land infertile. The person then transformed the lands right into a shrimp ponds. Diaa Hadid/NPR conceal caption

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Diaa Hadid/NPR Now the business, for higher or worse, is dramatically slowing down.

"All of the shipments have come to a halt," stated Pawan Kumar Gunturu, the top of the Seafood Exporters Affiliation of India and managing director of Dash Exports. He stated some exporters tried to ship out inventory earlier than preliminary U.S. tariffs kicked in, with uncertainty over who was meant to pay the added payment.

The U.N.'s Meals and Agriculture Group reported a spike in Asian shrimp exports to the U.S. earlier than tariffs rose to 25%. Then in August, the FAO famous that shrimp farmers in India had "reported a drastic drop" in farm gross sales — by nearly 90% — attributable to a scarcity of demand from the U.S.

Gunturu stated main exporters have been protecting shrimp as soon as meant for the U.S. in storage whereas they seemed to extend their market share in different places, maybe the UK or different European nations, or elsewhere in Asia like South Korea or Japan. "It'd take a bit of little bit of time to diversify markets. Perhaps two months, three months, six months, that is tremendous," he stated.

However Arjilli Dasu, the final secretary of the Federation of Indian Fisher Organizations, informed NPR that the majority business gamers couldn't wait that lengthy, as a result of their revenue margins are so skinny. "Farmers, they're getting principally 5%, merchants 5%, exporters additionally 5% [from sales]," Dasu stated.

He stated he was already seeing impacts down the road: Merchants and exporters weren't shopping for wholesale shrimp from farmers.

That is why shrimp farmer Rajakrishnan Raju thinks that is his final harvest. "It's extremely, very, very dangerous," stated Raju, 55, as one among his staff shooed away birds that attempted to nab a few of the premium shrimp raised in ponds simply off the coast of Bheemunipatnam.

Raju stated he let go of one among his three staff a couple of weeks in the past, saving $220 as he tried to seek out methods to chop prices. He stated shrimp farming had lots of up-front, fastened prices that he could not cut back: the acquisition of fry, or hatchlings, their feed, energy to aerate the ponds and pump in recent sea water.

<img src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/3000x2000+0+0/resize/1100/quality/50/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F20%2F05%2Fa3ad707941a48fda696baef05070%2Fmg-8063.jpg" data-template="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/3000x2000+0+0/resize/{width}/quality/{quality}/format/{format}/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F20%2F05%2Fa3ad707941a48fda696baef05070%2Fmg-8063.jpg" class="img" alt="A track between shrimp ponds that belong to farmer Rajakrishnan Raju, 55, who raises about 10 tons of premium shrimp a year for the U.S. market." loading="lazy"/> A monitor between shrimp ponds that belong to farmer Rajakrishnan Raju, 55, who raises about 10 tons of premium shrimp a 12 months for the U.S. market. Diaa Hadid/NPR conceal caption

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Diaa Hadid/NPR Raju stated his shrimp would not be prepared for market till January, however already Indian merchants who purchase shrimp wholesale from farmers have been providing costs that have been decrease than his break-even level, as a result of they have been pricing in tariffs. His hope now's to promote on the smallest loss doable. "The tariffs will destroy us," he stated.

This can be the destiny of all sectors hit by Trump's tariffs, stated Shoumitro Chatterjee, assistant professor of worldwide economics at Johns Hopkins College. "I'm sort of very pessimistic on what's coming."

Chatterjee stated Indian industries might have survived a 25% tariff fee as a result of it wasn't that a lot increased than the levies Trump placed on imports from competing, neighboring nations: Pakistan at 19%, Bangladesh and Vietnam at 20%.

However "I believe surviving the 50% goes to be almost unimaginable," Chatterjee stated. "My greater fear is that the way in which the tariffs are structured proper now, it is all loaded on sectors that present jobs," he stated, itemizing "attire, footwear, leather-based, textile, and even meals processing." These industries supply uncommon, dependable work in India, even whether it is badly paid. Most Indians work on small plots of land.

Some key Indian industries are exempt from tariffs for now, like prescription drugs, and sensible telephones — together with iPhones — a lot of that are exported to the U.S.

India"s Ministry of Commerce didn't reply to NPR's a number of requests for info on the way it deliberate to mitigate the tariffs. Shrimp business leaders informed NPR that the ministry was participating with them and promising to seek out them new markets.

Washington and New Delhi are nonetheless participating in commerce talks. However Chatterjee stated even when Washington and New Delhi got here to a deal to decrease tariffs, the injury was carried out.

"Earlier, India was the protected wager," he stated, referring to a push by the earlier Biden and Trump administrations for corporations to have interaction Indian corporations and to fabricate in India, to spice up the nation as an financial rival to China.

"So all these alternatives that have been coming to India," he stated, "I believe all of that's going to dry out."

<img src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/3000x2000+0+0/resize/1100/quality/50/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F94%2F1a%2F68f23ff741db85d0bb204b62dcc8%2Fmg-1934.jpg" data-template="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/3000x2000+0+0/resize/{width}/quality/{quality}/format/{format}/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F94%2F1a%2F68f23ff741db85d0bb204b62dcc8%2Fmg-1934.jpg" class="img" alt="Nets used to catch shrimp fry dry amid trees in the Sundarban region of the Indian state of West Bengal." loading="lazy"/> Nets used to catch shrimp fry dry amid bushes within the Sundarban area of the Indian state of West Bengal. Diaa Hadid/NPR conceal caption