March 24, 2017 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — A trade war with China may be somewhere on the horizon, but the Maine lobster industry is hoping that the horizon is a distant one.
According to the figures published by the National Marine Fisheries Service, in 2016 China imported more than $108 million worth of lobsters from the United States. That’s a reported 14-fold jump from 2010, when lobster imports were about $7.4 million.
More than 80 percent of U.S. lobster imported to China comes from Maine.
The price of lobster was high last year, but so was demand. Published trade figures show that, in 2015, China imported about 13 million pounds of lobster from the United States. Last year, imports of American lobster topped 14 million pounds.