As tariffs reshape seafood processing, the state’s largest food export is in jeopardy.
Curt Brown grew up lobstering in Cape Elizabeth, a scenic coastal town in southern Maine. When he wasn’t hauling traps at sea, he worked at a wharf in nearby Portland, where he loaded boxes of live lobster onto trucks bound for Canada.
“All I knew at that time was that the truck was headed to Quebec,” Brown said. “And I was too young and naive to really question that, but it did seem strange, you know?”
Although an iconic symbol of the state, most Maine lobster is shipped to Canada before it’s eaten. Maine catches a majority of its lobster in the summer and fall, while Canada’s harvest culminates in the winter and spring. Neither has the capacity to process their entire catch during peak season, so production facilities across the border help absorb the surplus. This symbiotic relationship has cemented lobster as Maine’s largest food export, bringing in over $1 billion annually while supporting thousands of jobs across the state.
Most lobstering boats in Maine are owner-operated and sell their catch directly to wholesalers at the waterfront. These intermediaries distribute the lobster to processors with specialized facilities that produce meat, tails, claws or other “value-added” products that are sold at a higher turnaround price to retailers.
On average, around 60% of Maine’s annual lobster catch is processed in Canadian facilities. Canada imported $237 million worth of live lobster from Maine last year, whereas the U.S. spent $437 million on processed lobster products from Canada.
While Brown sees the indispensable value of Canadian processors, he’s now pushing to grow Maine’s industrial footprint. In 2025, he co-founded Bold Coast Seafood, a processing company that owns a 100,000 square foot waterfront facility in eastern Maine. But as Bold Coast scales its operations, the Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs are threatening the very domestic expansion they promised. Although the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) allows for the duty-free trade of lobster across the border, tariff-driven inflation is increasing overhead costs throughout the lobster supply chain.
“The fishermen are getting a high boat price, but they’re not very profitable right now because their expenses have gone up so much because of inflation,” said Marianne LaCroix, executive director of the Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative. “Their fuel and their traps and bait—all these things cost them more to operate.”
Maine fishermen went on 10% fewer fishing trips last year, while the state’s annual lobster catch dropped from 110.7 million pounds to 78.8 million pounds between 2021 and 2025. Lobster landings are further threatened by climate change, as the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99% of the global ocean.
The University of Maine Lobster Institute organizes an annual U.S.-Canada Lobster Town Meeting to bring together industry members from across the border. In January’s meeting summary, project director Chris Brehme noted that “processing capacity, weak coordination among supply-chain actors, and ongoing tensions over pricing and profit distribution” were shared concerns among attendees.
U.S. and Canadian industry members still recognize their mutual reliance and seek closer cooperation, according to the report. But another threat is now looming over the cross-border lobster trade: the renegotiation of USMCA in July.
For Geoff Irvine, director of the Lobster Council of Canada, the longevity of USMCA is more vital than ever. Canada sells about 70% of its lobster to the U.S., and the Canadian fishery was already hard hit by Trump’s tariffs in 2025.
“The American market is the number one topic we talk about every day,” said Irvine, adding that Canadian trade strategy is now “all about diversifying away from the U.S.”
So far, this strategy has paid off for Canada. In March, China suspended its 25% tariff on Canadian lobster while maintaining a 10% retaliatory tariff on U.S. lobster. Given that China consumes nearly half of the world’s lobster, this policy shift puts the Maine fishery at a growing disadvantage.
For now, Canada still benefits most from its geographic proximity to the U.S. and well-established relationships with American retailers. Yet many worry that Trump’s tariff regime could further undermine the U.S.-Canada trade relationship and leave the lobster supply chain even more vulnerable to inflation.
Ahead of the USMCA review, industry players are stressing these concerns to the policymakers who could determine the fate of Maine’s cornerstone export.
”We’re doing everything we can as an industry to work with our federal delegation, with our governor [and] with our representatives at the state level to shout from the rooftops that trade flow between the U.S. and Canada when it comes to lobster is essential,” said Brown. “And I know our counterparts north of the border are doing the same.”
