July 9, 2018 — On a commercial fishing dock outside of Marathon, a television sat atop a makeshift table allowing a small crew of workers to watch the latest World Cup soccer match while repairing lobster traps and painting buoys.
With lobster season a few weeks away, thousands of traps were waiting to be loaded on boats and dropped in the waters up and down the Florida Keys.
“Gooooooal!,” the play-by-play announcer suddenly blared in Spanish, as Sweden scored the second of three goals on Mexico. The largely Mexican crew stared at the television in disbelief.
Boat captain Gary Nichols wasn’t paying much attention to the game. He was trying to cope with another world event – the growing U.S. trade war with China.
“It’s starting to get a little scary,” said Nichols, a commercial fisherman in the Keys for more than 30 years.
On Friday, the United States imposed $34 billion in tariffs on a variety of Chinese products, including computers, dishwashers and medical devices.
In return, China immediately fired back with $34 billion in tariffs on U.S. goods, such as pork, poultry, soybeans, and corn. And tucked into the list of 545 products getting slapped with a 25 percent tariff by China were Florida lobsters.
“I was really praying that wasn’t going to occur,” Nichols said. “And at this moment I don’t know what is going to happen, we’re all just in limbo.”