Trump tariffs skewer India's shrimp exports : NPR

Mounds of dried shrimp sit at India’s port of Visakhapatnam, the place a lot of the financial system relies round seafood exports — mainly frozen shrimp to the U.S.

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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 Crimson Lobster’s $11 million loss after it supplied a $20 countless shrimp buffet in 2023 that proved to be too common.

The truth is, People eat extra shrimp than every other seafood, about 5.5 kilos per individual, per yr, 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 yr, in keeping with the Indian Ministry of Commerce.

A Kashmiri man walks past a shop displaying stone jewelry and Kashmiri handicrafts in Srinagar, in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

A motorcyclist and a three-wheel tuk-tuk pass a line of oil tanker trucks parked outside an oil refinery.

At the very least, it used to return from India. The business has been skewered by President Trump’s tariffs utilized on many Indian sectors. They had 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 japanese 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 keeping with an business guidebook that used 2023 figures.

Port workers toss baskets of ice to keep catch fresh at the port of Visakhapatnam.

Port employees toss baskets of ice to maintain catch recent on the port of Visakhapatnam.

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These feeling the impacts embody Sita, who returned residence after one more unsuccessful hunt for a brand new job on a current 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 have not heard from him since,” Sita mentioned.

Sita is a single mom to 2 teenage boys. She informed NPR that she paused her sons’ schooling for now, as a result of she could not afford to pay their non-public faculty charges. She fearful about making lease, and paying again the $100 mortgage she took out in August to cowl bills. “If they do not give us work,” she mentioned, referring to the close by shrimp processing plant, “how are we meant to outlive?”

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.

Fishwives promote mounds of dried fish and shrimp on the port of Visakhapatnam, India.

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She was certainly one of a few dozen girls who informed NPR in Visakhapatnam that they hadn’t had a shift in weeks, or they’d their hours curtailed. The ladies solely gave their first names, fearful that they’d lose their jobs for good in the event that they had been recognized.

The business employs over 1,000,000 individuals and includes dozens of export firms, 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 supply the majority of employment. That is the place girls like Sita say they stand from morning to night, dealing with ice-cold shrimp to organize it for packaging.

Reliance Industries' oil refinery in Jamnagar, India, is a network of metal towers, pipes and tanks in this photo. In the foreground, two men ride a motorbike on a road.

On a current night within the village of Bheemunipatnam in Andhra Pradesh, a few dozen girls gathered on a neighbor’s porch informed NPR that they had 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 mentioned. “We have now swollen ft,” she mentioned. Backaches. Joint ache. However Chinni mentioned a time off 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 studies 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 had been extensively utilizing antibiotics to develop shrimp quicker, and in additional concentrated numbers.

NPR additionally met feminine rice farmers who accused a robust, politically related 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 Could 2024, had been from the Sandeshkhali district of the Sundarbans, the world’s largest contiguous mangrove forest, an space preferrred for shrimp farming.

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.

Girls within the village of Sandeshkhali within the Indian state of West Bengal in Could 2024. The ladies say their lands had been seized by an area 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.

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Now the business, for higher or worse, is dramatically slowing down.

“All of the shipments have come to a halt,” mentioned Pawan Kumar Gunturu, the pinnacle of the Seafood Exporters Affiliation of India and managing director of Dash Exports. He mentioned 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 charge.

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 virtually 90% — because of a scarcity of demand from the U.S.

Standing behind a lectern while holding up a report that says "FOREIGN TRADE BARRIERS" on its cover, President Trump announces his global tariffs at a Rose Garden event at the White House on April 2, 2025.

Gunturu mentioned main exporters had been preserving shrimp as soon as meant for the U.S. in storage whereas they regarded to extend their market share in different places, maybe the UK or different European international locations, or elsewhere in Asia like South Korea or Japan. “It’d take somewhat little bit of time to diversify markets. Perhaps two months, three months, six months, that is effective,” he mentioned.

However Arjilli Dasu, the final secretary of the Federation of Indian Fisher Organizations, informed NPR that almost all 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 mentioned.

He mentioned 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 unhealthy,” mentioned Raju, 55, as certainly one of his employees shooed away birds that attempted to nab among the premium shrimp raised in ponds simply off the coast of Bheemunipatnam.

Raju mentioned he let go of certainly one of his three employees a couple of weeks in the past, saving $220 as he tried to search out methods to chop prices. He mentioned shrimp farming had a number of up-front, mounted prices that he could not scale back: the acquisition of fry, or hatchlings, their feed, energy to aerate the ponds and pump in recent sea water.

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.

A monitor between shrimp ponds that belong to farmer Rajakrishnan Raju, 55, who raises about 10 tons of premium shrimp a yr for the U.S. market.

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Diaa Hadid/NPR

Raju mentioned his shrimp would not be prepared for market till January, however already Indian merchants who purchase shrimp wholesale from farmers had been providing costs that had been decrease than his break-even level, as a result of they had been pricing in tariffs. His hope now’s to promote on the smallest loss attainable. “The tariffs will destroy us,” he mentioned.

This can be the destiny of all sectors hit by Trump’s tariffs, mentioned Shoumitro Chatterjee, assistant professor of worldwide economics at Johns Hopkins College. “I’m form of very pessimistic on what’s coming.”

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

However “I believe surviving the 50% goes to be practically unattainable,” Chatterjee mentioned. “My greater fear is that the best way the tariffs are structured proper now, it is all loaded on sectors that present jobs,” he mentioned, 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 prescribed drugs, and good telephones — together with iPhones — lots of that are exported to the U.S.

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

Washington and New Delhi are nonetheless participating in commerce talks. However Chatterjee mentioned even when Washington and New Delhi got here to a deal to decrease tariffs, the harm was performed.

“Earlier, India was the protected wager,” he mentioned, referring to a push by the earlier Biden and Trump administrations for firms to interact Indian firms and to fabricate in India, to spice up the nation as an financial rival to China.

“So all these alternatives that had been coming to India,” he mentioned, “I believe all of that’s going to dry out.”