In December, Frank Parker upgraded to a bigger shrimp boat.
For the Mississippi shrimper, it was a good trade with an older fisherman who was looking to scale back. But the driving force behind acquiring a boat that would allow Mr. Parker to stay in deeper waters for two weeks at a time was President Trump’s return to the White House, and his promise to tax nearly all imports.
When Mr. Trump followed through on that promise and levied tariffs across the world this week, Mr. Parker, 52, said it felt “like the sun coming out of the tunnel.”
It had been years since he had felt even a sliver of optimism about the shrimping industry, which his family has been in since his ancestors moved to Biloxi, Miss., in 1842. Gulf Coast shrimpers have been pummeled in recent years by natural and man-made disasters, as well as rising fuel costs.
But Mr. Trump’s tariffs, Mr. Parker and several other shrimpers said last week, could go a long way toward quashing perhaps their biggest financial threat: the cheap, farm-raised imported shrimp flooding the American market. Now, the biggest importers of shrimp, like Vietnam, Indonesia and India, face some of the largest tariffs.
In recent years, the average price of headless shrimp has dropped to as low as $1.50 per pound for some sizes of shrimp along the Gulf Coast — while the costs of diesel fuel and running a business have climbed.
“I’ve left shrimp out there because I didn’t want to give them away for $1 a pound,” Mr. Parker said of recent shrimping trips. He added, “I don’t see it getting any worse. We’re at the bottom of the barrel now.”
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