Gabby Killett’s report for WVUE FOX 8 opens on a worry that feels older than any court case: a family trade that has survived generations can still get crushed by something that happens far away, with one ruling and a few signatures.
On Friday, Killett reports, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, and Louisiana shrimpers immediately started doing the math in their heads. If imported shrimp gets cheaper again, local shrimp becomes harder to sell, even when it’s fresher, even when it’s a community staple, even when it’s a family’s whole life.
One shrimper, Charles Robin Sr., doesn’t talk like this is a policy debate. In Killett’s story, he talks like it’s personal – because it is. Standing in Lower St. Bernard Parish, Robin tells FOX 8 it “hurts,” and then points backward through time, saying his ancestors came up the canal that shaped their way of life.
That sense of history is what makes the fear so sharp. If the numbers don’t work, the tradition doesn’t matter, the labor doesn’t matter, and the next generation doesn’t get a seat on the boat.
“They Not Gonna Make It”: A Seventh-Generation Shrimper Sounds The Alarm
Killett introduces Robin as a seventh-generation shrimper, and his warning is blunt. He looks at the younger shrimpers coming up behind him – his sons, other families, the people who still want to work the water – and he says they won’t survive at today’s prices if imported shrimp becomes the cheaper option again.
“They not gonna make it,” Robin says in the report. “These young bars today is not gonna make it at the prices that we are going.”
In his mind, the Supreme Court decision isn’t just about a president losing a tool or a legal argument. Killett explains that Robin believes the ruling wipes out the large tariffs that had been pushing imported shrimp higher, and that means imports can undercut him again – fast.
Robin’s point, as FOX 8 frames it, is that local shrimpers aren’t asking for a handout. They’re asking for a market where the cheapest option doesn’t automatically win just because it came from overseas and got priced to dominate the shelf.
He calls it wanting “a fair shot,” and he connects that fairness to tariffs that he says level the playing field. In the report, Robin argues that when foreign shrimp gets hit with big tariffs – he mentions “30%” and “50%” – it brings everyone closer to the same starting line.
“It puts us in the same playing field as everybody else,” he says, describing the idea that price competition should not be a rigged race.
There’s also a raw edge to how he talks about the imported product itself. In Killett’s report, Robin claims the imported shrimp “not good for the people,” and while he doesn’t break down testing or labels in this segment, the emotion behind the line is clear: he believes local shrimp is being displaced by something Louisiana diners would not choose if they knew what they were getting.
The Part That Quietly Breaks People: Costs That Keep Climbing
Even if you set tariffs aside, Killett’s report makes another point that hits hard: shrimping is already expensive, and inflation has taken what used to be a tough business and turned it into something that can feel impossible.
Robin puts it in a single sentence that lands like a weight.
“It’s costing us four times more money,” he tells FOX 8, “to make the same trip I did back in 1978.”
That line matters because it strips the story down to survival. People who don’t work the water sometimes imagine fishing as freedom – open air, salt wind, independence. But Robin’s math is about fuel, repairs, supplies, equipment, labor, and the cost of simply leaving the dock and coming back.
If the trip costs four times more, but the sale price doesn’t rise the same way, then every run becomes a gamble. And when a court ruling threatens to lower your sale price even more, it doesn’t feel like competition. It feels like being squeezed from both ends.
Killett also reports that Trump said he responded by signing an executive order adding a 10% tariff on imports. But in Robin’s view, that doesn’t fix the bigger problem, because the market isn’t just consumers comparing a bag of shrimp to another bag of shrimp.
In the report, Robin argues the real buyers driving this are “franchises” and “big money people,” the kind of commercial customers who can order huge quantities and often chase price first. Until those buyers start investing in local shrimp – until they care about where the product came from—Robin believes the local industry will stay on the edge.
“These franchises don’t want to talk to us,” he says in Killett’s story, before pointing out the irony that people come to Louisiana wanting seafood, and still end up eating imported shrimp.
A Local Seafood Shop Makes A Simple Pitch: Buy Local Or Lose It
FOX 8’s report doesn’t leave the story only in the hands of shrimpers, because shrimpers aren’t the only ones who feel it when local supply collapses. The seafood shops do, too, and so do the customers who think they’re tasting Louisiana when they might not be.
Killett speaks with Jeff Pohlmann, the owner of Today’s Ketch Seafood, and he draws a bright line: he says he buys local, and he says the freshness is the entire point.
“I don’t think you get it much fresher than that,” Pohlmann says, describing what it means to buy straight from the people who caught it.
His message after the Supreme Court ruling is basically a challenge to everyone else in the supply chain. If you want the local industry to survive, you have to act like it matters while it still exists.
“By buying local, we support our home team,” Pohlmann says in the report. “We supporting our people that support us.”
That’s not just a slogan. It’s a warning wrapped in a friendly sentence. Because if customers keep buying imported shrimp without thinking about it, and if restaurants keep serving imported shrimp without saying so, then the local boats don’t just have a bad year. They stop going out at all.
Killett’s report frames Pohlmann’s point as both economic and emotional: he’s saying Louisiana seafood is not only better – it’s part of what makes the place itself.
And in a moment like this, the “buy local” message isn’t a trendy lifestyle idea. It’s a lifeline.
The Political Crossfire Hits The Dock
After Killett’s report from St. Bernard Parish, the reaction widens into politics, and FOX 8 notes that local leaders took very different messages from the same Supreme Court decision.
The report says Gov. Jeff Landry called the ruling “disappointing” in a Facebook post, and he framed it as a basic fairness issue: there can’t be free trade without fair trade. Landry also expressed confidence, according to the report, that Trump and his team would keep fighting for a stronger economy.
On the other side, FOX 8 reports that Democratic Congressman Troy Carter called the ruling a “win” for small business owners, farmers, working families, and everyday Louisianans. In his post on X, Carter praised the court for confirming the tariffs were “illegal.”
Those two statements show how the same ruling can be sold as either protection or relief, depending on where you stand.
But down on the ground, Killett’s reporting suggests shrimpers don’t experience the ruling as a legal lesson. They experience it like a price tag being slapped on their future.
If you’re a shrimper listening to a politician argue “free trade,” you might hear, “cheaper imports.” If you’re a local seafood shop listening to someone say “illegal tariffs,” you might hear, “the market will decide,” even if the market has been tilted for years.
And when the debate gets that abstract, it’s easy to forget the tradeoff is real people, real boats, real mortgages, and real kids deciding whether there’s a reason to stay in the business.
“We Can Feed The World If They Let Us”
Killett ends the heart of the story where it started: with the people who still believe Louisiana shrimping is worth fighting for.
Robin talks about the future like it’s something being held back, not something that naturally fades away. He doesn’t say the Gulf can’t produce. He doesn’t say the families can’t work. He says the opportunity is there – if the system doesn’t choke it.
“We can, we can feed the world if they let us,” Robin tells FOX 8.
That line sticks because it isn’t just about shrimp. It’s about pride and capability, the idea that local industry still has value in a world that keeps pushing everything toward the cheapest possible option.
And it’s hard not to notice the quiet tension in this whole story: customers love the image of Louisiana seafood, and Louisiana tourism sells that image hard, but the shrimpers in Killett’s report are basically saying the real thing is getting priced out of its own identity.
A court decision can feel like a clean, final moment – gavel down, case closed – but the docks don’t work that way. The docks work in slow pressure, one season at a time, where a “small” price shift can wipe out a family business faster than any hurricane.
If the shrimpers are right, this isn’t just a scare story after a big headline. It’s a warning flare from a fragile industry that doesn’t have much cushion left.
Raised in a small Arizona town, Kevin grew up surrounded by rugged desert landscapes and a family of hunters. His background in competitive shooting and firearms training has made him an authority on self-defense and gun safety. A certified firearms instructor, Kevin teaches others how to properly handle and maintain their weapons, whether for hunting, home defense, or survival situations. His writing focuses on responsible gun ownership, marksmanship, and the role of firearms in personal preparedness.
