MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • August 16, 2020
In February, China vowed to buy more U.S. lobster as part of a trade deal that was supposed to revive the once thriving U.S.-to-China pipeline, but the latest trade data show that has not happened – China has purchased less U.S. lobster in 2020 than it did in 2019, when the trade war was still in full swing. In the first six months of 2020, China bought just $25.9 million of U.S. lobster, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That is 23 percent less than what it had bought in the first half of 2019, and 61 percent less than its 2018 sales during the same period, in the final months before China slapped a 25 percent retaliatory tariff on U.S. lobster.