The North American lobster industry is projected to have similar volumes and landing patterns as it has had in years past in 2025, but U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated mentions of 25 percent tariffs on Canadian products could cause disruptions.
The North American lobster supply has been relatively stable for a decade, averaging between 300 million and 350 million pounds each year. According to a panel of experts at the Global Seafood Market Conference, taking place 19 to 23 January in Palm Desert, California, U.S.A., totals in 2025 will largely remain the same, with the potential for a slight decline in catch totals in the U.S. state of Maine.
According to the panel, the biggest “what-if” factor is whether the Trump administration will follow through with repeated promises to apply a 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods. That proposal would hit USD 5.6 billion (EUR 5.3 billion) worth of seafood products, and the lobster industry would be hit in both the U.S. and Canada.
“When we talk about some of the pending potential challenges that we might see with regards to tariffs, it’s really going to impact our business because of the way that we handle the product,” Slade Gorton & Company Director of Marketing and Business Development Annie Tselikis said. “When you see those U.S. lobster landings – which are primarily Maine landings, as 90 percent of the product that’s caught in the U.S. is caught in Maine – that product comes in fast and furious in a six-month period of time.”
That rapid pace means millions of pounds of lobster are being landed at the same time – and the U.S. frequently sends large portions of that to Canada.
“It doesn’t all stay in Maine; it doesn’t all go live. About 60 percent of it, or more depending on the year, will get shipped to Canada for processing,” Tselikis said.
Champlain Seafood Vice President of Sales Owen Kenney said the main reason the U.S. industry ships to Canada is the need for additional processing capacity.
“The product that’s exported to Canada, the vast majority of it, ends up getting processed into meats and tails,” Kenney said, who added that Canada’s ability to process large volumes of product is essential for dealing with the spikes in supply.
That product then gets shipped back to the U.S.; only this time, it’s a product of Canada and potentially subject to the tariffs.
“So, there’s a real dependence on upon the infrastructure. There just happens to be this border between the middle of the supply,” Tselikis said.
Kenney said demand for frozen lobster tails has been strong in the U.S. and has absorbed a significant portion of the Canadian fishery. That demand showed in Canada’s shipments of lobster to China, which were at a relatively low level in 2024 compared to the past five years – though that total is still much higher than it was a decade ago.
“That shift to China has been massive,” Kenney said. Total exports in 2013 were around 11 million pounds, which increased all the way to 76 million pounds in 2023.
Regardless of the impact of tariffs and the market dynamics, Tselikis said what anyone interested in the lobster market needs to know is the cyclical nature of the fishery, with the U.S. fishery coming on strong in the summer months and huge volumes coming out of Canada in April, May, and June, with another uptick in November and December.
She also added that the Maine fishery’s slight decline in volume is not unexpected given historical precedents in the fishery.
“For the longest time, the Maine lobster industry hovered around 20 million pounds,” Tselikis said.
A combination of good fisheries management practices in place for decades and a decrease in predation from declines in the groundfish industry led to a huge jump in lobster in the 1990s for a 20- to 30-year period.
“For those of us who were there for the rise, we knew that it wasn’t going to last forever. We knew that it would eventually be leveling off. So, if you’re reading the media and you see a decline in lobster landings, it’s not a catastrophe, it’s not a failure of the fishery, or a failure of the regulatory system. It’s something we all anticipated eventually happening,” Tselikis said.
