Canada’s largest lobster fishery set to begin amid threat of Trump tariffs

N.S. exported 51,000 tonnes of lobster valued at more than $1 billion last year

Published Nov 14, 2024  •  3 minute read

Fishermen load their traps in Lower West Pubnico, N.S., on Nov. 28, 2020. Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

Thousands of fishermen are preparing to harvest Canada’s most lucrative lobster fishing grounds off Nova Scotia’s southwest coast, but they have a new worry this year: the prospect of tariffs being imposed by the United States.

Nova Scotia exported 51,000 tonnes of lobster valued at more than $1 billion last year, by far the most in the country, and the U.S. is the province’s biggest market, with about 60 per cent of exported lobster landing in that country each year.

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As a result, the stakes are high if U.S. president-elect Donald Trump makes good on his campaign promise to impose duties of between 10 per cent and 20 per cent on all imported goods. Such a tariff could cost the Canadian economy about $30 billion per year in total, according to a Canadian Chamber of Commerce report in October.

Trump’s inauguration is still a couple of months away — he officially takes office on Jan. 20 — but fishermen are trying to take the threat in stride while preparing for the season to open on Nov. 25.

“People are concerned, but until it happens, we’ll just carry on,” Geoff Irvine, executive director of the Lobster Council of Canada, said. “There’s not a lot we can do to prepare, and speculating on what it could mean doesn’t really get us anywhere.”

Besides being the country’s most lucrative lobster fishery area, it’s also the largest. The region includes two licenced fishing areas (LFA 33 and LFA 34), one of which stretches from the Halifax region along the southwestern coast while the other is off the province’s western edge.

The two areas are by far the country’s biggest producers, accounting for about a third of the $1.5-billion worth of lobsters caught in Canada a year. Nearly 1,700 boats and more than 5,000 fishermen fish these waters.

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The season, which runs until late May, will be well underway by the time Trump is in office. There’s also reason to believe the industry will be spared by the new U.S. administration, David Campbell, New Brunswick’s former chief economist, said.

He said Trump’s tariff threats are about protecting and increasing investment in the U.S., especially in manufacturing, which was behind his decision to impose a particularly harsh set of tariffs on China and extra duties on other countries, including Canada, during his first term.

But you can’t manufacture more lobsters, Campbell said, since it’s a limited resource and the U.S. only produces a third of the lobsters caught in Canada.

“They’re not going to increase lobster production in the U.S., so if they cut off Nova Scotia and Canada, it’s just going to be more expensive to consume lobster in the United States,” he said. “It’s also just going to drive up inflation.”

This time around, however, Trump has suggested another reason for tariffs across the board, which is to use extra duties to recoup lost revenue from the federal tax cuts he has promised to make.

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“My gut is that they’re not going to put a tariff on something that they can’t produce in the U.S.,” Campbell said. “But I wouldn’t bet on this because (Trump) is so unpredictable.”

For now, it’s a waiting game for industry players such as Irvine. The industry, he said, has made big gains in expanding its market, particularly in China. In 2022, Nova Scotia exported more than $450-million worth of live lobster to China, up from $25 million in 2007.

One reason for that gain was because Nova Scotia’s lobster business turned out to be a benefactor of a U.S.-China trade war during Trump’s first term. In response to Trump’s tariffs at the time, China imposed a 35 per cent markup on U.S. lobsters, which crippled Maine’s chief export but boosted Nova Scotia sales to the country.

In the end, the U.S. government included Maine’s commercial fishermen in a $30-billion bailout that was originally earmarked for farmers who were hit hardest by the trade war.

Canada and the U.S. also have a good trading relationship, unlike China and the U.S. Canada buys half of Maine’s lobsters in any given year, Irvine said, so the prospect of a trade war doesn’t help anybody.

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While fishermen are worried about how this will play out, he said they have more immediate concerns on their minds.

“What’s the catch going to be like?” he said. “What’s the price of lobster going to be like? What’s the weather going to be like?”

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