Last year a total of almost 2100 Maine companies exported $2.8 billion in goods and services to 169 countries.
Maine International Trade Center President Wade Merritt characterizes this 4 percent year-to-year increase as “solid,” but he says tariffs imposed by the U.S. and its trading partners, stopped what he says had been a much better growth trajectory.
“In July we were up 9 percent, but comparing the second half of the year in 2018 to the second half of the year in 2017, we were actually flat,” he says.
Merritt says tariffs have had the most visible impact Maine’s lobster exports. He says that before China imposed a 25 percent tariff on lobster in July, exports were up about 170 percent, but by the end of the year, they had dropped by 15 percent.
Merritt says while the Chinese market for lobster won't be replaced overnight the industry is making inroads into other markets, including southeast Asia.
