America’s lobstermen feel the pinch from Trump’s trade war

Chinese and EU retaliation to US policy has caused a sea change in what was once a $1.5 billion export industry in Maine

In his cargo shorts and T-shirt, Mark Barlow looked anything but an international trade warrior. Yet a few weeks ago, when he slid open the door to his low-slung warehouse in a scrappy industrial estate to reveal concrete tanks filled with 375,000 gallons of 40-degree water and a fortune in live Maine lobsters, he might as well have been leading a battlefield tour.

Since the 1990s, Barlow has built his company, Island Seafood, ...