Mumbai Sea-food industry hit by US tariffs thousands of livelihoods at stake
Prior to August 2025, frozen seafood faced a 10% duty in the US. The Trump administration raised it first to 25% from August 7 and now to a staggering 50%.
The 50 percent tariff on Indian frozen seafood exports to the US, World’s largest seafood market, has overshadowed a sector that has flourished for generations.
At Mumbai’s Sassoon Dock in Mumbai, one of Maharashtra’s busiest and largest seafood-exporting hubs, the air is clouded with apprehension with the usual bustle of unloading, catches, auctioning and processing seafood.
Reportedly, the industry in Mumbai which has sustained countless families for decades, now faces a future clouded by uncertainty.
The fishing industry in Sassoon Dock is already encountering an extinction threat due to the Mumbai Port Authority’s leasing out of godowns for other commercial purposes, a subject that has consistently been reported in the media.
US president Donald Trump’s tariff has stressed the industry.
Until early August 2025, frozen seafood from India faced a 10% duty in the US. The Trump administration raised it first to 25% from August 7 and now to a staggering 50%. Exporters and auctioneers warn that this sharp increase could dismantle what has long been a lucrative trade.
According to Vasant Bhuchade, president of the Marine Products Auctioneers Association, if the Indian government doesn’t find a solution to the tariff, exporters will not value fishermen. Adding that traders and exporters will ask for a cheaper rate during auctions, and fishermen, who usually earn good money from prawns, will then not bother going into the water for prawns. The ripple effect will even rob the women who shell prawns of their income. Prawns are the mainstay of fishing activity, and this tariff will put the entire industry in danger.
Exporters will be put into dire straits under the tariff hike since the US and China are their primary markets. The consequences are expected to cascade down the supply chain from exporters to fishermen, aquaculture farmers, and even prawn shellers. With exporters likely to pass on the burden of increased tariffs, those on the ground stand to lose the most.
Krishna Pawle, president of the Shiv Bharatiya Port Trust Sena, voiced his concerns attributing that in the last 25 years, prawn prices have remained stable owing to steady aquaculture practices. “Sea prawn rates hover around her ₹300 per kilo, depending on the size.
Now, with the 50% tariff, exporters may force the price down to ₹250 or even ₹225 per kilo. This will directly hit fishermen, just like falling prices have devastated farmers in other sectors.”
Pawle went on to add that a single trawler fishing trip of eight to ten days cost nearly ₹4 lakh, factoring in diesel, ice and labour. If prawn prices fall, the economics just don’t add up
That the fishermen will stop going for prawns, and this will cripple not just fishing but also prawn-shelling units. It will cause massive unemployment.”
By some estimates, Sassoon Dock exports roughly 30 tonnes of prawn daily for nearly 300 days a year, with each kilogram priced around ₹300, a significant contributor to the local economy. In the two-month monsoon fishing ban, the industry already slows down.
There are over 12,000 prawns peelers in Sassoon Dock in Colaba. For workers like Jayashree N, who has been shelling prawns for the last two decades, the ripple effects of the tariff are already deeply worrying. Jayshree adds that she works from 7 am to 7pm and earns ₹600 a day. This being her. only livelihood,” further adding that “If exporters start paying less, fishermen will stop catching prawns, and we won’t have any work. It’s a chain reaction and they are at the bottom of it.
News Edit KV Raman
