Trapped in tariffs, lobster-gear industry looks for way out
A gritty gray mist rises from the ground floor of Riverdale Mills interrupted by explosions of color: yellow, reds, and blues – as if someone had tried to merge this Northbridge, Massachusetts, steel-mesh maker with pieces of a Crayola factory.
This is America’s biggest producer of lobster traps and crab pots, with their colorful PVC coatings to protect them from the seawater, but CEO James Knott Jr. has seen his profit margins and his employee base dwindle over the past nine months because of U.S. steel tariffs.
“My main competitors are out of China and the EU and they don’t have any tariffs,” he says. “We get out of line with the world market and
