Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Good Morning! Good morning! In the news today: Shrimpers attending Blessing of the Fleet ceremonies in Darien pin hopes on Trump’s tariffs; the stakes for Coastal Georgia in the U.S.-China trade war; first-time protest at a Glynn County federal installation; and four things for your radar.. Questions, comments, or story ideas? You can reach me at craig.thecurrent@gmail.com
NEWS: BUSINESS
‘Work out for us’
A bill designed to support Coastal Georgia’s shrimp industry didn’t pass before the state legislature’s session ended earlier this month.
So, without immediate support from elected officials, some local shrimpers attending the annual Blessing of the Fleet ceremony in Darien over the weekend now pin their hopes for relief on President Donald Trump, The Current’s Justin Taylor and Margaret Coker write.
After years of seeing his profession undercut by lower cost farmed shrimp from overseas, Capt. Wynn Gale — a fourth-generation commercial shrimper — says he hopes Trump’s proposed tariffs will “work out for us” by cutting off the influx of imports that have decimated the once prosperous industry.
At the same time, the 52-year-old Gale, who has been shrimping since he was 12, says he’s worried that whatever benefits the industry stands to gain from Trump’s initial tariff proposals will get bargained away when countries start negotiating with the administration.
NEWS: JOBS
Tariffs and local jobs
Coastal Georgia is proud of its role as a pillar in America’s global economy, with the roll-on, roll-off port facilities in Brunswick and the massive container port and shipping logistics hub in Savannah.
No wonder, then, that the tens of thousands of people tied to those jobs are anxious about how the escalating U.S.-China trade war will affect our local economic well-being, The Current’s editor-in-chief, Margaret Coker, writes.
Here are some statistics from the U.S.-China Business Council to ponder as the battle over tariffs intensifies:
- Exports from Georgia to China were responsible for more than 4,000 jobs in Georgia’s 1st Congressional District in 2023.
- More than $600 million in goods were exported to China in 2023, almost 75% of which were paper and pulp products as well as aviation equipment.
- Approximately $250 million in services were exported to China from our part of the state in 2022, with 60% of that stemming from ocean freight and port services.
Besides the importance of U.S.-China trade for Coastal Georgia’s ports, Georgia’s largest agricultural commodity — chicken and poultry parts — relies on China as a major export destination.
Earlier this month, the Chinese government banned at least two Georgia poultry companies, including a subsidiary of a Statesboro processing plant, because inspectors found higher than permitted levels of antibiotics in the products delivered to China. That’s an additional headache to the possibility of the skyrocketing costs Georgia poultry producers will face if planned triple-digit tariff threats are implemented.
Read more about how Georgia’s export economy is tied to China here.
NEWS: PUBLIC SAFETY
Protesters say training compound sparks fear
Protests against the Trump administration’s immigration policies came to the gates of a sprawling federal government compound in Glynn County on Friday.
In the first of a series of planned demonstrations, more than two dozen protesters rallied near the gates of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC), an interagency installation first opened in 1975 where personnel for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Service (ICE), the Secret Service and scores of other federal agencies receive law enforcement training.
One of the protest’s organizers, Kylie Harrison, said the demonstrations are aimed at getting the attention of center’s trainees, located 7 miles north of downtown Brunswick. They want them to see the fears that some Glynn County residents have over the Trump administration’s ambition to deport some 1 million immigrants this year.
It’s “very important” for the ICE personnel who train at FLETC to understand that some residents of Brunswick and Glynn County are “afraid” of the agency and what it’s doing, Harrison told Jabari Gibbs, The Current’s Glynn County reporter.
Another protester, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being identified by their employer, said they were participating in the protest because Coastal Georgia Congressman Buddy Carter was not raising questions about the administration’s deportations.
Carter is “missing in action,” they said.
NEWS: UPDATES
4 things for your radar
- “Next year will be a new year with new battles to fight, but Savannah lives to fight another day,” says Savannah Mayor Van Johnson, commenting on the failure by Georgia lawmakers to pass legislation that challenged the city’s gun-control ordinance.
- Trump administration officials cut $4 million in funding to a climate research center at Princeton University, saying the center’s research “promotes exaggerated and implausible climate threats, contributing to a phenomenon known as ‘climate anxiety,’ which has increased significantly among America’s youth.”
- Fearing a paper on evolution might get them deported, two non-American scientists working in the U.S. withdraw it from consideration for publication in a scientific journal.
- Gone from the shelves of the library at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis after a review of books that are deemed to violate the administration’s anti-DEI policy are Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” which chronicle the author’s “struggles with racism and trauma” and Janet Jacobs’s “Memorializing the Holocaust.” Still on the shelves: Adolph Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and Jean Raspail’s “The Camp of the Saints,” which envisions a takeover of the Western world by immigrants from developing countries.
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