The Rushford Report Archives

September, 2003: Cover Story

By Greg Rushford

Published in The Rushford Report

CHAUVIN, La. —A treasured part of Americana is in trouble. Louisiana ’s shrimp fishermen, along with their counterparts from Texas to the Carolinas , entered the 21st century unprepared to survive in a changing global economy. They hadn’t realized fully that anyone who has to catch his shrimp in the ocean is at a distinct comparative disadvantage vis-à-vis foreign competitors who have learned to use modern aquaculture techniques to farm all the shrimp they wish. A flood of cheap farmed imports has simply overwhelmed U.S. shrimpers in the past three years, who now only hold 10-12 percent of the U.S. market. Prices have tanked.

            Reeling, American shrimpers have hired lawyers to file antidumping petitions aimed at driving prices up by imposing tariff barriers on the foreign competition. The problem, of course, is that even a successful antidumping action that results in some higher tariffs won’t do much more in the long run than divert trade flows. With so many exporting nations involved, there are simply too many commercial holes in this antidumping dike to plug with tariffs. But shrimpers say they are so desperate that they are willing to try anything.

            As John DeSantis, a senior staff writer for the Courier, a newspaper in nearby Houma that is owned by the New York Times, has observed in a thoughtful series of articles exploring the plight of the shrimp industry, there is a war for survival going on here. DeSantis, despite being a Yankee who comes from New York , has become an influential man here. Louisiana State Sen. Reggie Dupre calls DeSantis a “Yankee Cajun,” which must be the highest term of respect for any outsider. In my years of reporting on trade matters, I have never seen a local newspaper that has taken so much time to dig so deeply into the root causes of a local industry’s problems. The Courier’s reporting has opened many eyes here.

            The shrimp war’s battleground goes beyond economics and politics. “This is not just an industry, this is a culture,” declared Bobby Bergeron, the Terrebonne Parish president, in a meeting of shrimpers last month. “It’s where I come from. It’s who I am.”

            While Louisiana shrimpers have run up against the free-trade theory of comparative advantage, these are not theoretical people. Bergeron is rightly proud of his Cajun culture, which has enriched America . A gentle and tolerant people for the most part, certainly hardworking, there is no doubt that the Cajuns are presently hurting. I came here last month to try to better appreciate what they are going through.

A drive into an earlier America

It is a drive back in time, into an earlier America .

Terrebonne Parish and bayou towns like Chauvin are in the southernmost part of Louisiana . While the parish is only about 70 miles from New Orleans , the drive took me back decades to a small corner of America where life doesn’t seem to have changed much since the mid-20th century.

            Leaving downtown New Orleans , within a few minutes you drive through a foreboding cypress swamp and into a different world. You pass a cemetery with names on elevated tombstones like Broussard, Breaux, and Bourgeois. Soon you cross the high Luling Bridge that spans the Mississippi River , peering down at tall, green sugar cane fields. After awhile, you cross a big humpty-back bridge and then a second little rusty-iron bridge. Finally, after slowing to allow a long-necked white egret to cross the road, you turn into the parking lot of a local gathering place in Chauvin called Marty J’s.

            When I got out of my air-conditioned rental car, my glasses fogged up in the swampy heat. When they cleared, I realized that I was across the road from the Bayou Petit Caillou. For decades, priests have blessed the local shrimp fleet here upon the start of the shrimp season.

            In New Orleans , I had been told that this part of Cajun Country is sometimes referred to as Shrimp Central, the heart and soul of Louisiana ’s shrimp industry (although nobody used that term here). Shrimp Central is one of the most isolated parts of America . The bayous and enchanting marshes also make this one of the most hauntingly beautiful parts of America . As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow noted in his 1847 epic poem, Evangeline, “They who dwell there have named it the Eden of Louisiana!”

Lost economic innocence

Although folks here are still struggling to understand exactly why, Terrebonne Parish and nearby parts have lost their economic innocence. They can no longer pretend that their Eden is not really connected to the global economy. But Cajuns would rather talk less about economics and more about their values, which mainly center on freedom. Perhaps that love of freedom is traced to the fact that Cajuns are the descendents of Acadians who were the victims of British intolerance in Nova Scotia in the 1700s.

            These days, Cajuns, who have become cultural icons, cherish the freedom that comes from making one’s living by going out on the water on their own boat for days on end, listening to Cajun music on the radio, and catching prized Gulf shrimp without taking orders from any outside bosses. “I sit back, turn on the music, and steer with my toes, feeling happy,” one boat captain I met related, while demonstrating how he does that.

            Such men can’t imagine life as, say, a Washington lawyer, living in a city, wearing a dark suit, toting a big fat briefcase into government buildings, jumping to the tune of difficult clients. (Currently, some Louisiana Cajuns are enjoying their own roles as difficult clients, which I’ll get to in a minute.)

            Mostly, this is the lifestyle that shrimpers learned from their daddies, who learned to love the life from their daddies. While much education beyond grade school has never been highly prized in these parts, these are still talented people. Incredibly, many shrimpers and their families have made their own boats — from scratch, without even plans. They have traditionally paid scant attention to the outside world.

            Still, trouble has come from outside. 

            Imports of cheap farmed shrimp from a dozen-plus Asian and Latin countries have hit fishermen here like an economic hurricane — and one far more devastating than the tropical storms that regularly sweep in from the Gulf of Mexico . The last good year for shrimpers was 2000. Shrimp fishermen who were paid $3-per-pound at the docks last year now get perhaps $1.85, if they are lucky.

            Shrimpers are coming to realize that they must learn to market their niche product smarter. In the short run, they have been lured by the antidumping siren call. (For additional background on the shrimpers’ plight, their need to learn to market their shrimp smarter, and also on the economically powerful coalition of importers and seafood distributors who are gearing up to oppose antidumping tariffs, see, Shrimpers, get out your duct tape, The Rushford Report, March 2003).

            While the exporting shrimp countries that are expected to be targeted in antidumping litigation have not been publicly identified for the record, industry sources tick off the following as likely candidates: China , Vietnam , Thailand , Indonesia , India , Ecuador , Guyana , Venezuela , Honduras , Belize , Mexico , and perhaps El Salvador .

At war with themselves

Some shrimpers in Louisiana are also at war with themselves. The majority members of the Louisiana Shrimp Association’s board are vehemently insisting that they will support only an antidumping action that they control financially. This LSA faction, which is headed by the board’s president, A. J. Fabre, has bitterly split with other shrimpers on the board who endorse the antidumping plans of a larger — and apparently much better financed — industry group from eight shrimp states from Texas to the Carolinas known as the Southern Shrimp Alliance.

            The reasons for the LSA board’s insistence on controlling the money are not entirely clear. Perhaps it has something to do with the recent reported employment of Fabre’s wife at to manage the LSA office, which apparently does not yet exist. Nor is it clear if the LSA has enough money to wage expensive antidumping warfare. Earlier this year, the board flirted unsuccessfully with the idea of persuading Mexican shrimp interests to pay them $1 million not to be named in the case. Last month, Fabre was talking about raising $1 million from Louisiana taxpayers, courtesy of the state legislature. Fabre is also hoping that he can persuade recipients of Louisiana’s share of some $6 million in federal disaster aid to chip in perhaps $500 each to fund the litigation, hoping later to collect so-called Byrd revenues (the antidumping tariffs on foreign shrimp that would be collected by US Customs).

            If the above sounds problematic, it is also unclear that Louisiana shrimpers, on their own, even have the necessary legal standing to file an antidumping case. The case could well turn on processed, frozen shrimp, arguably a different product than the wild shrimp brought into the docks by fishermen. Lawyers for U.S. importers and the foreign countries can be expected to wage protracted — and expensive — legal warfare over such uncertainties. Moreover, the LSA acknowledges that it has not yet completed the necessary paperwork to file anything at this time.

            On August 18, I attended an extraordinary “peace meeting” in the nearby town of Houma that was convened by local political leaders to try to persuade the recalcitrant LSA shrimpers to come to terms with the SSA, which has prepared itself to litigate. The SSA’s members include processors and packers who do have legal standing. (The American Shrimp Processors Association voted last month to support the SSA’s petition, and donate $100,000 to the legal kitty).

            The peace meeting turned into chaos. There is a Bayou expression for the finger-pointing and raised voices that characterized the meeting: Gumbo Ya-Ya. It means, “Everybody talks at once.” After the meeting, I heard one rather large Louisiana gentleman suggest that he just might burn the boat of another Louisiana shrimper who had a different view on which Washington law firm was better equipped to pursue the antidumping litigation. Just more Gumbo hot air, hopefully. (As this went to press, the intransigent Mr. Fabre was thought to be on the receiving end of considerable behind-the-scenes pressure to stop splitting his industry).

Top-flight legal and lobbying talent

The Southern Shrimp Alliance (with the concurrence of representatives of the Louisiana Shrimp Association who serve on both boards) has retained Brad Ward, a partner in Dewey Ballantine, the antidumping powerhouse that is well known for its advocacy on behalf of the domestic steel and lumber lobbies. The SSA has also retained the Jones Walker law firm to lobby on its behalf. Jones Walker, which is headquartered in New Orleans and has an office in Washington , D.C. , is one of the most influential law firms in Louisiana . In Washington , the firm has an alliance with Bob Livingston, a former Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee who now heads The Livingston Group. And Jones Walker’s managing partner in D.C., Chris Johnsen (also from Louisiana ), watches out for the SSA. 

            The Louisiana Shrimp Association is looking to veteran trade practitioner Will Leonard, a partner in Adduci, Mastriani & Schaumberg, a Washington boutique. Leonard — a former aide to the late Sen. Russell Long (D-La) and a former chairman of the International Trade Commission — is also well-connected in Louisiana and well-liked member of Washington ’s trade bar. Also working for the LSA is lobbyist Max Turnipseed, president of MCT International and a trade consultant who knows the political landscape in Baton Rouge and Washington very well. Representing his client Dow Chemical Co., Turnipseed sits on federal advisory committees for chemicals that report to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Commerce Department.

             When the U.S. International Trade Commission will make its determination that the domestic shrimp industry has been injured by the imports — an easy prediction —  the evidence of such injury will have been reduced to dry statistics.

Hard times in Terrebonne Parish

One of those statistics will be the first man I met inside Marty J’s truck stop in Chauvin, a quiet man named Mr. Scott.

            Mr. Scott, who appeared to be in his 50s, told me how the first of his two shrimp boats had been run over by an oil-company barge, and its engine ruined. He shrugged that he had hired a lawyer on contingency to seek compensation, but hadn’t heard from him in six months. “And last night, my second boat sunk.”

            I’ll not soon forget the look of despair in Mr. Scott’s eyes when I asked him if he had had insurance. Who can afford it? he replied. Mr. Scott said that he intends to try to find some work as a welder.

            Before I left Marty J’s to drive around the bayou with John DeSantis, the local Pizza Express man stopped by our table. Dirk Guidry uses shrimp toppings on his pizzas, and even has a shrimp turnover that goes inside the pie. The shrimpers’ troubles were also his, Guidry explained. “If they make no money, they don’t spend none.”

            I met a Cajun family in their modest home made of cypress wood. A 25-year old young man named Benji and his pregnant girlfriend happily showed me their ultrasound scan of their forthcoming baby. But the fall White Shrimp season that began on August 11 hadn’t been very happy for Benji, who works as a deckhand.  “I’ve been trolling a week and a half, and I’ve only made $400 so far,” Benji related. “Trolling is fun,” he said. “All I ask, is bring the price back where it used to be,” Benji added, referring to his hopes that the antidumping litigation will drive up shrimp prices.

            Benji said that he had left school after the 8th grade.

            DeSantis and I drove into a dock used by Vietnamese-American shrimpers, former “boat people” who eventually landed here after the 1975 communist victory in Vietnam . A pleasant-looking Caucasian man who happened to be leaving the dock smiled and waved to us. He was holding papers in his hand. We later learned that the man was from a Texas bank, looking to seize a boat that had fallen into arrears.

            I met a man named Captain Nguyen, who said that he had escaped Vietnam in a boat to make a new life in America . “I’m American now,” he said, proudly. Captain Nguyen said that he supports the antidumping suit against Asian competitors like Vietnam . He asked that I not publish his whole name, because of widespread fears in the community that “the commies” back in Vietnam might retaliate against the families of Vietnamese-Americans who supported the trade litigation. “What if my father dies, and I have to go back home?” the captain asked.

            One of the captain’s children works on the boat with him. The other two are in college, and one of them intends to become a doctor. That’s quite an accomplishment for a man who fled his native country in 1979 with nothing.

            Education will save the enterprising Vietnamese. But again, that’s the long run. Captain Nguyen said that he was now getting $1.85-per-pound for his shrimp these days. “Two years ago that would have been $3.00,” he added.

            I found Captain Bobby Lirette sitting on the dock next to his boat, God’s Gift. This is the man who showed me how he steers his boat with his toes, listening to Cajun music. Lirette was preparing to grill shrimp that he has just caught and sell it to passers-by for $3.00-per-pound, instead getting half that from a processor. Why should I go out and catch more shrimp to sell at $1.50, when I can sit here and get $3.00? Lirette reasoned. Lirette said that he got the idea to begin retailing after reading DeSantis’ series in the Courier, which prominently featured his boat. 

            Kim Chauvin, a pleasant 35-year-old woman with three children, also was sparked to action by DeSantis’ reporting.

            I met Chauvin in the spacious kitchen of her brick ranch-style home. “My husband David has been a shrimper for 17 years,” she related, showing me a picture of the Mariah Jade, a 73-foot boat named for her daughter. David Chauvin and his father built the boat with their own hands. “And my husband hasn’t worked this hard for all these years, just for us to give up,” Kim Chauvin told me.

            So while David is out on his boat, Kim has gotten busy learning how to market shrimp. She has just graduated from a 10-week entrepreneurial class at Nicholls State University , in Thibodaux , a town north of Houma . She studied marketing, financial management, and how to work with bankers, lawyers, and government officials. “I had to write a business plan,” Chauvin says. “It was hard.”

            She’s started a business called Shrimp Express, selling retail. Some of her buyers have come hundreds of miles.

            Chauvin has also generously kept her door open to others in the shrimp community who also are thinking of developing the marketing end of the business. While DeSantis and I were sitting in her kitchen last month, four people from Lafitte dropped by to ask Chauvin for advice in how they, too, could get into marketing and adding value to their shrimp.

            While her story and determination should be inspiring to anyone, not everyone is applauding Kim Chauvin. Some of her colleagues on the board of the Louisiana Shrimp Association seem to consider her entrepreneurial talents too Yankee-like to trust. Chauvin, a member of the Louisiana Shrimp Association board, supports the antidumping action. But she says that other members of the board who want to spend all their time talking about antidumping instead of smarter marketing want to kick her off the board. Go figure.

            Old attitudes and habits, it seems, die hard in the swamps.

            I left Terrebonne Parish with great respect for the Cajun shrimpers I met. But it is clear that not all of them are going to survive.