> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.evanscutchmorepress.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Louisiana Shrimpers Ask Trump to Curb Imports. NOAA's Own Data Shows a Deeper Problem. - URL: https://www.evanscutchmorepress.com/louisiana-shrimpers-ask-trump-to-curb-imports-noaas-own-data-shows-a-deeper-problem/ - Published: 2026-09-08T16:22:04.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-08T16:22:04.000Z - Description: The Louisiana Shrimp Association wants President Trump to limit foreign shrimp, blaming imports for a price collapse. But NOAA's own economists found the Gulf fleet stopped turning a profit two decades ago, which makes the industry's remedy harder than it looks. - Author: Kim M. Braud - Tags: News Analysis, All Stories, Shrimpers, Coastal Louisiana NEWS ANALYSIS *A petition launched this week asks Washington to hold back foreign shrimp. The federal government's own economists say the Gulf fleet stopped turning a profit long before the latest surge, which complicates the remedy the industry is asking for.* By Kim M. Braud | September 5, 2026 --- The Louisiana Shrimp Association opened a petition drive this week asking President Donald Trump and his administration to limit the foreign shrimp flowing into the country. Its president, Acy Cooper, Jr., says dockside prices are the lowest he has seen and still falling. The petition, addressed to the White House and posted on the advocacy platform Action Network, asks the administration to weigh quotas, tariff-rate quotas and safeguards on imported shrimp, to enforce trade laws against dumping and mislabeling, and to expand federal purchasing of domestic shrimp for schools, food banks and disaster relief. The logic is straightforward: hold back the imports, and the price recovers. The federal government's own numbers suggest it is not that simple. ## What the imports did There is no dispute that foreign shrimp reshaped the market. In a snapshot report published in March, NOAA Fisheries found that Gulf-harvested shrimp fell from 28.7 percent of the U.S. market in 1984 to 4.5 percent in 2023, even as American shrimp consumption more than quadrupled. Almost all of that growing appetite was met by imports, first wild-caught, then farm-raised as aquaculture spread through the developing world. As the imported volume climbed, the inflation-adjusted price of Gulf shrimp slid from more than six dollars a pound in the 1980s to under two dollars by 2023. Total Gulf shrimp revenue fell from 489 million dollars in 2021 to 221 million in 2023, a drop of more than half. The active fleet shrank by 19 percent in those two years, and the industry shed an estimated 1,200 jobs. ## A fishery that was already losing money Here is the part the petition does not address. The same NOAA report found that the Gulf shrimp fishery has run an average annual profit margin of about half a percent for eighteen years. By the agency's own assessment, it has not been economically sustainable for two decades. The fleet has aged because there has been no profit to reinvest, and the report's lead economist, Dr. Christopher Liese, described a fishery that has spent decades "fishing down its capital stock." > The imports did not start the crisis. They arrived at a fleet that had already been quietly running at a loss for twenty years. The crisis is economic, not biological. NOAA's stock assessments show shrimp populations are stable and not overfished. The boats are not idle because the shrimp are gone. They are idle because, at current prices, a captain can lose less money tied to the dock than out on the water. ## What the petition can reach, and what it cannot The remedies the petition seeks are real levers. They are also narrower than they were a year ago. In February, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the law behind Trump's sweeping global tariffs, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, did not authorize them. That decision erased the reciprocal tariffs that had briefly lifted dockside prices. The administration has since reached for other tools, opening trade investigations under Section 301 that name seafood explicitly, while separate tariffs on steel and other goods remain in place. In Congress, Senators Bill Cassidy and Cindy Hyde-Smith have proposed phasing a tariff on Indian shrimp up to 40 percent by 2028. Each of those could raise the shelf price of imported shrimp. None of them changes the arithmetic NOAA describes: a fishery whose costs have outrun its prices for a generation. Tariffs can widen the gap between foreign and domestic shrimp at the counter. They cannot, on their own, make a two-dollar pound of shrimp profitable to land when diesel runs near five dollars a gallon. NOAA's economists point the same direction. Their report suggests the surest path is not to out-price imports but to sell Gulf shrimp as a distinct, premium product. That is a longer and less certain road than a tariff, and it is not the road the petition asks Washington to build. ## Verify it yourself - NOAA Fisheries, *Snapshot: Economics of the Gulf of America Federal Shrimp Fishery* (NMFS-SEFSC-795, March 2026): the revenue, price, market-share and profit-margin figures cited above. - The Louisiana Shrimp Association petition, posted on Action Network - [https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/save-americas-shrimp-industry-protect-american-shrimp-harvesters-now](https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/save-americas-shrimp-industry-protect-american-shrimp-harvesters-now?ref=evanscutchmorepress.com) - The India Shrimp Tariff Act, S. 2868, Cassidy and Hyde-Smith. - The February 2026 Supreme Court ruling on IEEPA tariffs, and Executive Order 14276, "Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness." The petition passed 1,400 signatures within days of launching, against a goal of 10,000\. Whatever Washington does with it, the NOAA data frames the harder question underneath: whether the fight is against imports, or against an economic model that stopped working long before the imports won. *PHOTO: working shrimp boat, framed nets deployed - A Louisiana shrimp boat works its nets on Lake Ponchartrain, September 2, 2026\. Framed nets like these are the gear of the state's inshore fleet, the small operators most exposed to the price collapse. Credit: Creole Sky* --- *Kim M. Braud is the Founder & Editor of Evans Cutchmore Press, an independent newsroom covering Louisiana and the Gulf South. Her reporting focuses on government accountability, infrastructure, business, culture, and the public policies that shape communities.* *© 2026 Evans Cutchmore Press. All rights reserved.* --- [SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSROOM](https://www.evanscutchmorepress.com/subscribe/)