What the h-e-double fish sticks is going on?
One week after announcing his sweeping reciprocal tariffs, US president Donald Trump made a surprising move this Wednesday (April 9) when he revealed a 90-day "pause" for most countries. And that wasn't all. With China not backing down, and slapping the US with tariffs in return, Trump took action and raised China's rate to 125%.
So we ask you again -- what the h-e-double fish sticks is going on?!?!
Catch the Current hosts Amanda Buckle and Lorin Castiglione are sending out the Fin-Signal (comparable to that of the "Bat-Signal") to get the Undercurrent News team of experts to provide all the answers.
Bookmark this episode because you won't want to miss "The Seafood Dummy's Guide to Trump's Tariff Chaos."
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Don't have time to listen? You're missing out on the fun! Find a transcript of episode 12 of Catch the Current below:
Amanda Buckle (AB): You're listening to Catch the Current, the coolest seafood podcast out there, from the team at Undercurrent News, your trusted source for industry news, data and prices. I'm Amanda Buckle.
Lorin Castiglione (LC): And I’m Lorin Castiglione.
LC: The Trump tariff saga continues! And there's no way that Amanda and I are talking about it all on our own.
AB: Lorin and I talked about it with our boss, too, and we suggested we just sit here and cry hysterically for 40 minutes. But he said no.
So open up those phone lines, Lorin. We're calling in the big guns because snip, snap, snip, snap, Trump is at it again.
Jason Huffman, the Americas editor for Undercurrent News, is our go-to guy for all the tariff nonsense. You dodged us last week to go see the Baltimore Orioles but there's no escaping the tariff talk this week.
LC: But before we start grilling you about latest tariff news -- and we're primarily talking about China here -- Jason, did you have the opportunity to try some seafood options while at Camden Yards last week?
Jason Huffman (JH): Promise that you won't kick me out of the club? I had a hot dog.
AB: Get him out of here. So wait. Fox News put out a story this week about how people are turning from seafood towers to hot dog towers. Jason, are you one of those people?
JH: You know, I got to be honest too about this -- the hot dog was a bad decision.
LC: We'll leave it at that.
JH: It pretty much always is.
AB: Well, speaking of bad decisions, let's waste no time talking about the tariffs. US president Donald Trump is urging everyone to stay calm. In fact, he shared on True Social this week: "BE COOL!"
Screenshot: Truth Social/ Donald Trump
But a few hours later, he posted, "based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the world's markets," he's raising the tariff charge to China by the US to 125% effective immediately.
LC: And that was only the beginning. He also lowered most global tariffs to 10% for a 90-day period. And we'll get to that, obviously. But before we do, Jason, I was hoping that you could explain where the seafood industry currently stands with US and China. Because before Trump hit China with 125%, China slapped us with an extra 50% tariff on US goods.
And as we speak, I think there might even be more developments coming from the China tariff that we're imposing.
JH: Please don't do this because it's triggering for me. There are so many tariffs flying around right now, and it just keeps going up and down, back and forth.
I saw a cartoon recently where someone put Bugs Bunny versus Daffy Duck and said tariffs on, tariffs off, tariffs on, tariffs off. I just don't know. There are so many tariffs.
The US tariffs on Chinese products now total 145%. That includes Trump's latest hike to 125% related back to his April 2 announcement on Liberation Day, which was originally 50%. Then it went to 84%. And then China issued some retaliatory tariffs.
So Trump said, "hold my beer." And then he went further out.
If you add in the 20% that Trump earlier tariffed China in relation to fentanyl, and also the Section [301] action dating back to 2018, you're at that latest rate. It's a lot. A lot of tariffs.
Meanwhile, China has now stopped US products with 131% in tariffs. And I don't think that's ending because this is like two cars playing chicken, and neither one of them are going to swerve off the road.
It's a nuclear war, a mutual destruction. I don't know where this is going to end.
AB: We're recording this right now, Thursday, April 10, around 2 p.m -- just a heads up because everything is happening so quickly.
Trump is really hammering China right now. But before he had his sights set on China, he was preparing for an epic trade war with Canada and Mexico. Jason, where do those countries currently stand? Because there was a little bit of confusion when Trump made his second announcement regarding tariffs.
JH: This is, again, thoroughly confusing because it goes back to February or March when Trump said he was going to issue 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico across the board. The seafood industry started to freak out, especially the lobster and the snow crab guys.
And they thought, "Oh my God, this product is going to be so expensive if we start talking about 25% tariff!" Then around March 7, the White House issued a statement that said that items that were covered under the USMCA (US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement) are not affected by this. Nobody paid attention to that because everything that we were hearing was so jumbled and confused and contradictory.
I don't think anybody believed that they were going to remove those tariffs. So we just kind of went on thinking that those tariffs were coming after multiple postponements. And then we get to the deadline in early March and they don't issue the tariffs.
US president Donald Trump announcing retaliatory tariffs on April 2, 2025. Photo Credit: The White House/ Facebook
This past week, we had this situation with the reciprocal tariffs. Trump made an announcement on Wednesday where he said, "I'm going to suspend all these country-specific tariffs, leave the 10% tariff in effect for everybody. And then we're going to raise China's tariff to 125%."
This happened at a presser at the White House. It was handled by treasury secretary Scott Bessent and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. A reporter asked Bessent if that 10% now applied to Canada, and I guess by implication, Mexico as well.
And Bessent just said, "Yes." And that then went everywhere. Reporters called the White House. The White House confirmed, yes, that is true. The 10% rate does apply to Canada and Mexico. I think it was about an hour later. People were freaking out all over the place.
I got a call from a snow crab and lobster wholesaler who said, "That can't be right." He's getting calls from suppliers in Canada. As it turns out, it wasn't right.
The White House subsequently corrected the information, said, no, that 10% is not going on top of Canada and Mexico. They're still tariff-free if they're USMCA compliant.
Have I thoroughly confused you?
AB: I'm staying silent on that matter.
I was thoroughly confused ahead of time, honestly. That's why Lorin and I were like, "Let's get Jason on here." I don't know if everybody knows this too, but you were previously at Politico.
JH: I was involved in their ag[riculture] and trade publications, and that was where I learned all about trade. Because when you first get into trade, you don't realize how complicated it is. I see people get things wrong all the time that I used to get wrong when I first learned about trade.
AB: It's complex. It's really, really easy to get confused, but that's why Undercurrent has the dream team assembled.
In addition to Jason here, we've also got editorial director Cliff White with us. I'm going to hit him with this next question. With China taking the brunt of Trump's wrath, other countries were tossed a bone. New tariff rates on imports from most US trade partners are now down to 10% for 90 days to allow for trade negotiations.
Cliff, which seafood-producing countries have caught the biggest break here?
Cliff White (CW): Well, the reciprocal tariffs affected over 200 countries, but they didn't affect all countries evenly. Now, that tariff is effective for every country except for Mexico and Canada -- and China. So the countries that got the break were the ones that were the so-called "bad actors" that got tariffs above 10%.
A lot of seafood-producing countries in Asia -- Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, and India -- all had their tariffs reduced from above 30% to 10%. Norway, I'm sure will be talked about at some point later in the podcast. They went from 15% to 10%.
Vannamei from India. Credit: Archer Dec24/Shutterstock
Any seafood producer -- and the list is on our website -- that was above 10% has got a break. So that's international. The flip side is all these countries that had previously had an advantage of just having a 10% tariff now are on even footing again with all their competitors. All those countries that were planning on taking advantage of their relatively lower tariff now are back to square one.
AB: Cliff, last week when we had you on, we talked about what was happening domestically with the shrimp producers, and they were thrilled. Can you say how they're feeling now with this flip-flop?
CW: Still thrilled.
AB: Okay. Okay, that's good.
CW: I spoke with a board member for the Southern Shrimp Alliance, and they see the tariffs as a really good thing for the reasons we've discussed before. It helps them compete against foreign competition, which they think is subsidized and not held to the same environmental or labor standards.
All their major competitors, except for Ecuador, were facing 30%-plus tariffs. That would have given them a huge leg up in the supermarkets. But now with all those competitors now at 10%, it's less good news for them, but they're still really excited that Trump is taking action that they think is going to be part of a larger program to help domestic industry survive and grow.
The guy I spoke to, he's a shrimp fisherman in Alabama, he said, "We don't expect our industry to ever come back to where it was in the '70s or '80s or even the '90s. We just want to hold on to what we've got now, and we're in danger of losing that."
I mean, with shrimp prices as low as they have been, with prices for materials going up -- and by the way, tariffs are going to make their material prices go up further -- but they think they're going to be in a better competitive position to just hang on to what they've got, to keep a domestic shrimp industry alive and existing for a while.
But again, Jason alluded to this, this is just a 90-day pause. Things are changing so rapidly. For anyone in the seafood industry, keep refreshing the Undercurrent News homepage because things are changing super-quick.
And you talked about countries or people that have the so-called winners of this. I mean, the winners are companies that can pivot really quickly because things are changing. No one's a real winner when there's this much instability.
It just makes businesses turtle up and be as conservative as possible when things are changing this quickly.
The next phase of this is the Trump administration is going to be negotiating with individual countries on tariff rates. So they've already met with Japan, they met with Vietnamese representatives yesterday.
Photo Credit: White House
So they say they've got a couple of these deals cooking. It's going to be bilateral deals. Come and make your deal quick. The quicker you get a deal, generally the better you do with the Trump administration. So first in the door generally gets the best discount. We've got 75 different countries already trying to make deals now, according to the Trump administration.
This is going to be changing on a day-to-day basis. So anything we say now, like you've said before, it could be dated by tomorrow.
AB: Yeah. In the past 10 minutes, what has changed? And actually, I feel bad for you, Lorin.
Lorin and I are very, very emotional. And so Lorin got out the weekly prices on Undercurrent. And then within like 10-15 minutes, Trump makes his big announcement. Lorin and I had a cry sesh yesterday. So Lorin, what's going on there?
LC: Personally, or ...?
Yeah, that's that's the nature of the landscape right now. Things are extremely volatile. But with each announcement, like Cliff said, you can be sure the team here at Undercurrent is on it. But always take note of the timestamps.
Yes, there was a 90-day pause [on the reciprocal tariffs] and countries like Vietnam are breathing a bit easier the next few weeks. But that looming uncertainty is still keeping pressure on the markets, maybe just not as heavily as before the announcement. Markets like pangasius or swai, which is a value finfish item imported into the US from Vietnam, it has got import volumes in line or exceeding that of tilapia from China. So we are talking a substantial amount of volume for for this fish. That looming 46% tariff rate was not something that market could sustain.
The US is one of the leading export markets for pangasius. So without US as an option, that's not good news for producers in Vietnam. And in this week's assessment, we did see prices increase for this market. But not only was that due to pressure from markets, but reports of tight raw material supply that is anticipated through June is also supporting that firm undertone there. And, of course, tilapia pricing from China has risen as well.
You just have to remember -- Jason mentioned it earlier -- every time these tariffs increase, we also need to add that 25% from Trump's first term with those Section 301 tariffs. So you should see the amount of Post-it notes on my walls to keep things straight.
Farm-raised Atlantic salmon from Chile behind the glass at a Giant grocery store in Silver Spring, Maryland, in March 2025. Photograph by Jason Huffman.
Then to quickly touch on salmon, Chile originally at 10% and Norway originally at 15% are on level playing fields for the next 90 days.
Canada still remains tariff-free, so it's holding an advantage. And I have already heard from some suppliers that they have some customers making the shift to buy from Canada to avoid those added costs.
But overall for this market, we're seeing a mix of opposing pressures from across the origins. Supply is ample. Demand is a bit tempered given that we are in the peak demand season of Lent.
So those factors are resulting in downward pressure, while the tariffs are offsetting that softening. Chile has a shorter production week next week, so things are expected to tighten up further as we inch closer to Easter. There's a lot at play with salmon currently.
AB: And we also have UCN senior price reporter Gary Morrison back on the line with us. Can't miss an opportunity to talk tariffs with Gary either.
And we talked a little bit to Cliff about shrimp, but Gary, I was hoping you could talk to us about what's been going on with the US markets there, too.
GM: Yes, certainly. I mean, I think there's a lot to talk about with tariffs and shrimp.
And it's actually where we saw the most price action in the US wholesale markets this week. Substantial price premiums were implemented pretty much right away when the tariffs were announced on April 2, because really, once the reality of the tariff situation hit, especially for the Asian countries that Cliff alluded to before, our Asian source countries where the tariff rates were the highest, replacement has been the most difficult coming into the country for shrimp previously. That's where the changes were sharper and higher.
But you also have to remember that the tariffs come on the back of anti-dumping duties and countervailing duties in the shrimp industry. So take a country like Vietnam, where we talked about one of the highest reciprocal tariff rates at 46 percent originally, that was on top of a 2.84 CBD and a 25.76 anti-dumping back in 2005. So what that did, and Jason and I talked about this a little bit in length, was it really altered trade flows.
And I think that's what most people see as a reaction to these tariffs and the situation going on now is markets do balance and they become efficient, but it does take time. So where those countries that were hit with 25.76% AD from Vietnam in 2005, they simply found other partners. They are not shipping to the US. It's the companies in Vietnam that have the lower rate that are still sourcing to the U.S.
In the initial ruling, we talked about clear winners and losers, and Ecuador was certainly a clear winner with the original 10% reciprocal tariff relative to the higher Asian countries.
Shrimp on a cutting board. Photograph by Bigc Studio on Shutterstock.
But now that's kind of evened out. We'll see what happens. I mean, tariff competitiveness is done, but really with anything else, it's how quickly can things pivot.
Cliff certainly made a great point before. Ecuador's our number-two provider of shrimp, but the US consumer really wants value-added. They want convenience.
It's really hard just to turn that spigot on really quickly to make that business decision. They've been investing in plants, they've been investing in value-added processing, but they just can't do it overnight. So, we still need to look to those Asian partners to get some of their product here.
And then in the wholesale market, because things happened so quickly, buyers stepped in because they wanted to make sure that the first buy would probably be the best buy. So sellers started protecting that inventory that they had on hand here, and they were really allocating what they had and allocating the customer base as well. They weren't taking on new customers, they were just working with their existing customers.
But I think it's really more about the uncertainty than anything else, right? Importers have to hedge themselves for that on-again, off-again tariff, because if they do buy product with a tariff, it's delivered here and then all of a sudden it has taken off. Their customer is going to look to them like, "Hey, the tariff's taken off. Are you reducing your prices?" But you have that higher-priced inventory here.
So that's the conversation that I'm having. It's not so much about the tariff. If there was certainty, they could make a business plan, but more about the uncertainty and how they can protect themselves moving forward.
A hardshell lobster from Nova Scotia, Canada. Photo from Nova Scotia Lobster Crawl Facebook page
For lobster, I think Jason and Lorin laid out the tariff situation pretty well. But the market did see another sell-off, a pretty broad-based sell-off for coldwater lobster.
That's more about having more inventory around than previously probably thought. Cash is obviously really paramount to these customers right now with the uncertainty. And there's a new season coming up, so they just don't want to hold that inventory moving forward.
So that's really how it's playing out a little bit differently in both the shrimp and lobster markets.
LC: Thanks, Gary. So as the seafood industry continues to navigate trade shifts, market volatility and global policy changes, there's never been a more important time to stay informed.
At Undercurrent News, we're here to keep you ahead of the curve with trusted US wholesale pricing, global trade data and breaking news coverage you can count on. If anyone would like a free trial or sign up for some of our crying sessions, there's a form you can fill out in our show notes or you can email me at LC@undercurrentnews.com.
AB: I just came up with a great promo for next Boston. We'll get customized tissues.
LC: There you go.
AB: That's a really great idea.
LC: Well, hopefully by next year, no more tears.
AB: No more tears. Thanks, guys.
GM: Bye.
CW: Be cool. Be cool.
LC: Be cool, everybody.
Contact the author amanda.buckle@undercurrentnews.com
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