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“My scallops had jumped up, which I wasn’t expecting. And then my lobsters have gone up. Those are coming from the Bahamas.” He’s seen worse. During the pandemic, lobster tail prices nearly doubled overnight from $10 to $19 at wholesale. “They didn’t even sell for a year. They kind of went insane,” he said. Now, prices are ticking up again: “A buck a tail, essentially.” Eckelman isn’t charging customers more for most products, at least not yet. “I’ll take the loss for now and hope that things are gonna go back down,” he said.
You know it’s hard out here for a shrimp A man and a van ride the waves of international trade policy
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If prices jump like they did during COVID, I’m out.” JUSTIN ECKELMAN, FISHMONGER
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Eating into profits Eckelman isn’t glued to policy trackers or economic updates. “I’m not good at watching the news,” he said. “I used to, and I just know it causes all sorts of anxiety.” He’s not alone. This spring, the U.S. Trade Policy Uncertainty Index, which tracks how often trade policy is mentioned in major news outlets, spiked to its highest level since the index began in 1985. It reflects a national mood of confusion and unpredictability. But Eckelman doesn’t need a chart to know things are shaky. He sees it in his invoices. Broadly, tariffs are the highest since the Great Depression, yet inflation was far lower than expected in consecutive months in April and May. The suggestion, according to Bankrate , a banking industry publication, is that businesses have not passed higher costs onto customers yet. That is true for Eckelman. “I haven’t adjusted my prices since I heard about it,” he said, “except for the lobsters. And even then, I just kind of ate it.” (Eckelman hiked shrimp prices June 14, less than a week after his interview with InMaricopa .) He is concerned about eating further into his margins. “I try not to have too much anxiety, but I am human,” he said. “I have a lot on my plate. I’m a caregiver for my father. I’ve got my sons. There’s a lot on me.” As he puts it shrimply: “I’ve got faith. The Lord has carried me 44 years. He’s not gonna stop now.” The new tariffs haven’t collapsed Eckelman’s business, but they’ve made the road ahead less certain.
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“My dad did this for, like, 30-plus years,” Eckelman said. “I’ve been doing it probably, I would say 13 years now. Maybe even a little more. Always out of the van.” That van, once simply a symbol of family tradition, now sits at the center of a global economic story. Claws and effect Since his return to the White House in January, President Donald J. Trump has launched a sweeping wave of tariffs unlike anything seen in modern U.S. history. A universal 10% tariff on all imports began in April, followed closely by steep, targeted penalties on trade partners like
Mexico, China and the European Union. For Eckelman, who sources shrimp from Mexico, lobsters from the Bahamas and scallops and fish from various other countries, those policies have a direct and personal cost. “When I first heard about them,” the fishmonger said, “it was just that, ‘Okay, let’s see how this goes,’ you know?” His supplier soon warned him prices would rise like the tide. “Shrimp was gonna go up,” he recalled. “Then within a week, the tariffs were dropped. So, I kind of had some fluctuation, but not like I was expecting, not yet.” Not everything came back down.
EW EXPECT TO FIND FRESH lobster tails in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. But just a few miles north of Maricopa, past M
Mountain, there’s a white van parked on the northwest corner of State Route 347 and Riggs Road. Pull up next to it, and you might have to wait. The sound of humming coolers competes with the whizzing traffic. Seafood is sold here, from the back of this van. Inside is Justin Eckelman, a second- generation fishmonger and the owner of Shrimply the Best, a business as resilient as the man behind the wheel.
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Maricopa, AZ 602-366-0447
44360 W. Edison Road, Suite 100
InMaricopa.com | July 2025
July 2025 | InMaricopa.com
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