The vast majority of the lobster sold out of Central California grows in the cold waters of the Santa Barbara Channel and is exported live to Chinese markets. Lobster fishers are already worried about what the Trump tariffs will do to the market, once the season opens in October, said Chris Voss, president of the Santa Barbara Commercial Fishermen.
About 330,000 pounds of lobster lands at Santa Barbara’s harbor, brought in by 45 fishers at an economic benefit of about $7 million last year, according to California Fish & Wildlife. Statewide, lobster represents a $24.2 million business. This time around felt like a repeat of the tariffs imposed during Trump’s first term, Voss said. Some workarounds were given for the economic loss back then, “but the scale of it now is so dramatic,” said Voss.
For a number of state treasurers, the effect on their economies and their residents could be severe. In a press call on Wednesday, Colorado’s Dave Young stressed that Trump’s chaotic and “reckless trade agenda has fueled uncertainty and fear across the globe, creating a self-inflicted crisis” that affected farmers’ and ranchers’ ability to buy machine parts and fertilizer. The treasurers of Minnesota and Illinois recalled the effect on soybeans during the previous Trump Administration’s tariffs, effectively switching China’s purchases to Brazil, a market loss from which domestic family farms were still recovering.
California’s state treasurer, Fiona Ma, emphasized the tariffs’ effects on consumers’ pocketbooks. On the day the tariffs were announced, she recalled, four truckloads of produce at the Mexican border were stuck until they paid the tariff. “This is what happened,” Ma said. “They charged their vendors; the vendors increased prices on the people. That’s how these tariffs work. They increase prices.”
Trump’s trade war with China seems to ratchet upward by the day. Last week it was a 145 percent tariff, but on Tuesday, the White House had announced China faced up to a 245 percent tariff on imports to the U.S. It later had to explain that the number was a total of the tariffs since the first Trump Administration. China’s retaliatory tariff is a 125 percent tax on U.S. goods.
Lobster isn’t the only Santa Barbara County commodity that will be affected by the new trade taxes. Wine, the county’s top finished agricultural product, was hit with an added 15 percent tariff in 2018, during Trump’s previous trade war with China. This time around, all U.S. goods, including wine, can expect a 125 percent tax to be applied as an entry duty to China.
What had happened in 2018 was a big drop in exports, and then the COVID pandemic slowed things further, said JiaMin Dierberg, the director of international sales for Star Lane Vineyard located in Happy Canyon in Santa Ynez. “I couldn’t even tell you what the total tariff is anymore,” she said, but it was basically killing exports.
According to the county Agricultural Commissioner’s office, among the items exported to China in 2023 were 5,275 empty wine barrels for liquor production and about 28 pounds of flower and vegetable seed. Santa Barbara County produces more than a million cases of wine annually, as well as selling nearly $1 billion in grapes for wines made across California.
The Trump tariffs affect countries and exports beyond China, of course, and price is not the only factor influencing buying. Among Santa Barbara County’s chief exports are strawberries, and the county’s top export country, Canada, bought 7,400 tons in 2023, Fiona Ma’s office reported. Canadian leaders agreed during a debate on Wednesday that they had stopped buying strawberries from the U.S. on principle. They only bought Canadian.
Correction: This story was corrected to reflect a clarification from the county that the “5,275 wine barrels” exported is actually the number of empty casks, not barrels of wine, sent to China in 2023.
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