A Random Note From Maine -- Nothing About The Bakken -- August 23, 2020

I've had as many posts on "lobster" / "lobsters" as almost any other subject (other than the Bakken and the market, of course) on the blog. I've been fascinated with the "lobster story" ever since our daughter / son-in-law lived in Boston for four years. And, of course, my love affair with Boston goes back a lot farther, all the way back to 1972, or thereabouts. Back on July 1, 2018, this post:

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The Lobster Page

This is a pretty cool story. Forget all the stuff about the tariffs. Look at the other stuff regarding lobster.

I started "following" the lobster story about ten years ago when we were spending a lot of time in Boston for several years. The lobster industry had been dying but researchers discovered the cause -- related to "fishing practices," and nothing to do with the environment. Once changes were made, the US lobster industry came back very strongly. Any doubts? Have you had any trouble finding lobster in your local supermarket? Down here in Texas, about as far away from Maine as one can get, there seems to be a glut of lobster in our supermarkets.

Anyway, from The WSJ:

Maine harvests more lobster than any other U.S. state or Canadian province. Last year it landed nearly 111 million pounds—its fourth-largest annual haul—which it sold for $450 million. The lobster industry accounts for 2% of Maine’s economy. 

And China represents a hungry new market. The post-molt lobsters Maine harvests from July through November have softer shells than Canadian lobsters, so they’re lower quality. But they also sell for several dollars less a pound. In the price-sensitive Chinese market, that has given the U.S. industry a competitive advantage over its Canadian counterparts. In 2017 the U.S. exported more than $137 million in lobsters to China, up from $52 million in 2015. 

I searched for that note after reading a Fox Business News story today (https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/europe-lifts-tariffs-on-us-lobsters).

The Trump administration and European Union agreed Friday, August 21, 2020, to a limited tariff rollback, providing relief to American lobster exports and to a range of European items, and providing a boost to strained U.S.-EU trade relations. 

The EU will drop tariffs on U.S. live and frozen lobsters. 

The American lobster industry has found itself struggling because the EU reached a free-trade agreement with Canada that reduced lobster tariffs. 

With no comparable agreement with the U.S., European imports of Canadian lobsters were soaring, while American lobster exports plunged. In June, the Trump administration created a payment program to aid the lobster industry, which had also been damaged when China retaliated to U.S. tariffs with tariffs on items including U.S. lobster. 

Lobster exports have become something of a political hot-button issue because it is an iconic industry in Maine, one of the states the president is targeting in his re-election campaign.

I get such a kick out of this. Remember when there was a shortage of US lobsters and it was blamed on "global warming"? That turned out to be not true and with a bit of tweaking in lobster harvesting, the crustacean has come back incredibly strong. And no, nothing to do with global warming.