Ecuador has overtaken India as the largest supplier of prawns to the US

 Ecuador has overtaken India as the largest supplier of prawns to the US.

Thanks, in part, to Trump.

He increased tariff on Indian shrimps to 60% in 2025. It was just 10% for Ecuador. This made the US importers shift from India to Ecuador.

But tariff advantage is only the latest chapter in Ecuador's remarkable prawn story.

In 2020, Ecuador overtook India as the world's largest shrimp exporter. In 2025, it exported more than $8 billion worth of prawns — more than India, Vietnam and Indonesia combined.

Ecuador did not achieve this simply through cheap labour or favourable geography. Its shrimp industry has become globally competitive through technology, economies of scale, improved genetics and disease control, automation, and the emergence of large, vertically integrated companies.

The result is extraordinary efficiency. A kilogram of Ecuadorian prawns costs about $2.40 at the farm gate, compared with $2.99 in India and $5.32 in China.

The industry now provides employment equivalent to about 1.6% of Ecuador's population and generates around 6% of GDP — a larger share of the national economy than automobile manufacturing contributes in Germany.

And Ecuador has crossed a symbolic economic threshold.

In 2025, the country exported about $8.4 billion of shrimp, compared with roughly $7.75 billion of petroleum.

The Economist describes this as a transition to pesco-state from petro-state. Pescar is fishing in Spanish.

A fascinating transformation of a small Latin American economy.

https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2026/09/02/a-prawn-superpower-rises?utm_campaign=r.the-economist-today&utm_medium=email.internal-newsletter.np&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=9/2/2026&utm_id=2227727