Trump opens marine national monument, rallies with Puritan workers during Maine visit

Photo / Maureen Milliken Former Gov. Paul LePage, left, escorts President Donald Trump from Air Force One at the Bangor International Airport Friday.

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By Maureen Milliken

President Donald Trump, saying he was going to "take care of" Maine's fishing industry, lifted fishing restrictions at a marine national monument off Cape Cod and vowed to levy tariffs on the European Union during a meeting with some members of the industry in Bangor Friday.

The remarks came during an hour-long roundtable on commercial fishing held at the Bangor International Airport during the president's 4-hour visit to the state, which included a tour of Puritan Medical Products in Guilford, followed by a rally with the swab-maker's employees.

Opening up fishing at the marine monument has little impact on Maine's fishing industry, critics said, but supporters said it's a symbolic victory.

“You have never been treated properly, at least not for a long time,” Trump told the eight representatives of the commercial fishing industry who met with him. He issued a proclamation that the Northeast Canyon and Seamounts Marine National Monument would be open to commercial fishing.

The 5,000-square-foot area is currently open to lobster and crab fishing until 2023, after President Barack Obama designated the area a national monument.

Trump Friday called the restrictions to the area an injustice. Lifting restrictions "is an easy one," he said.

The meeting, in a room festooned with lobster pots and a backdrop that said "Transition to Greatness," was attended by former Gov. Paul LePage, who escorted Trump across the tarmac from Air Force One when he arrived at 2 p.m.

Other participants were Terry Alexander, owner of Jordan Lynn Inc., of South Harpswell; Jim Odlin, board member of Blue Harvest Fisheries, Portland; Frank O’Hara Jr., of the O'Hara Corp., Rockland; Kristan Porter, president, Maine Lobstermen’s Association; Maggie Raymond, executive director of Associated Fisheries of Maine; Mary Beth Tooley, former council member, New England Fishery Management Council; and Jon Williams, owner, Atlantic Red Crab Co., Westport Island.

Also at the meeting were Peter Navarro, assistant to the president for trade and manufacturing, and Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt.

Navarro said the move to open the national monument, combined with a May executive order to begin an accelerated review and reduction of all unnecessary regulations on the seafood industry, will "bring back commercial fishing in a big way."

Odlin told Trump, "We have a lot of rules in place that are preventing us from harvesting sustainably some of the resources out here," including antiquated regulations that no longer make sense.

Porter said while many Maine fishermen don't fish in the national monument waters, the move by Trump to open them is welcome.

"This monument was formed in back rooms with special interests," Porter said. "This created poor policy. It hurt the fishermen. And we really worry about the precedent it sets: that you can close large areas of ocean and put all the rest of us who fish for different things in smaller and smaller boxes. And that hurts everybody."

Helping Maine fishermen

Critics of the move to end fishing restrictions at the national marine monument said it will not only hurt the environment, but it won't help Maine fishermen.

Mills, in late March, had asked the Trump administration to help Maine's fishing industry in light of the “substantial toll the COVID-19 pandemic is taking on Maine’s independent fishermen, aquaculturists, wholesale dealers and seafood processors."

In a letter to Trump, Mills specifically requested his administration consider direct financial assistance, subsidies and operating loans or loan deferment, among other possible measures, “to help our seafood industry survive this unprecedented moment,"

Friday, she said, “At a time when Maine fishermen are badly hurting, the president had an opportunity to acknowledge and address their very real and significant concerns — many of which are the direct result of his administration’s harmful policies.

"Rolling back a national monument 35 miles southeast of Cape Cod is not going to help the vast majority of Maine fishermen feed their families. It will not help them pay their mortgage or rent. It will not support an industry that is struggling under the massive weight of an unprecedented pandemic and misguided federal policies.”

Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine 2nd District, said, “President Trump just met with Maine fishermen to announce a policy change that will mostly benefit fishermen in ... Massachusetts. He clearly has no clue that the 'Washington bureaucrats' he blamed in today's roundtable are his very own — and they are the ones responsible for the most significant threat to the future of Maine's lobster fishery.”

Golden last fall led the Maine delegation to send Trump a formal request to intervene on behalf of lobstermen against new regulations from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that would restrict the types of lines lobstermen could use. The rules, which haven't yet been implemented, are designed to protect the endangered right whale, but the state's lobster fishing industry says there's no evidence Maine's lines are hurting the whales.

The delegation has not received a response to their request from the White House, Golden said.

When asked about the NOAA rules implementation by Porter, who said Maine lobstermen feel like their advice is being ignored, Trump seemed unfamiliar with the issue.

Trump said his administration would look into the matter. “As long as we can protect the whale, I’m going to do it," he said.

Trump vows tariff changes

LePage told Trump that one of the main issues hurting the state's fishing industry is a 40% tariff by China "because of some of the trade issues," and a 20% European Union tariff (though the EU tariff is actually 8%). Both tariffs have benefited Canada's lobster industry, which has better trade deals with China and the EU.

China imposed the tariff in 2018 after Trump imposed tariffs on a wide range of products shipped to the U.S. from China. The EU tariff came after the group of countries brokered a trade deal with Canada in 2017.

While Trump didn't address the China tariff Friday, he said, "The European Union has ripped this country off so much it's unbelievable." He instructed Bernhardt to write a letter to the EU telling them to change the tariff. He said if they don't change, the U.S. will put an "equivalent-plus" tariff on cars coming from the EU.

Directly addressing the media at the meeting, he said, "So, Canada doesn't pay a tariff for the same exact lobster in the same waters, but we pay a tariff. If the European Union doesn't drop that tariff immediately, we're going to put a tariff on their cars ... Watch how fast that tariff comes off. It should be plus plus plus."

Last November, Maine's congressional delegation sent a letter to U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer asking him to work on the elimination of the 8% live lobster tariffs.

LePage also called Canada "in many ways, our worst enemy in the produce industry" because of an exchange rate that allows them to sell products like broccoli and blueberries with a 30% advantage.

Puritan Medical Products visit

His visit to Puritan Medical Products in Guilford was followed by an announcement that the company will throw out the swabs that were manufactured while Trump was there.

While requests to the company for comment weren't immediately answered, when Mainebiz visited the factory last summer, officials there stressed the need for much of what's produced to be in a highly sterile environment.

Employees for many of the products, as they were Friday, wore hair coverings, masks, gloves, booties and gowns to protect products that are used for a variety of diagnostic tests. No one without the protective gear is allowed in areas that produce sterile products, Paul Dube, director of regulatory affairs and quality assurance, told Mainebiz during the visit.

During Trump's visit, he did not wear a face mask though others on the tour did. No one on the tour wore the other protective coverings that are required in the highly sterile rooms during production.

Virginia Templet, Puritan marketing manager, told USA Today Friday that the the factory was limiting production during Trump's visit to the factor floor. "Swabs produced during that time will be discarded."

After the tour, Trump held a rally with about 150 employees, listening to their stories of long-time and family history working for the 101-year-old business, and even hugging some, despite social distancing measures.

He told the group that he gets tested for COVID-19 every day, and always asks for a Puritan swab. Puritan is one of two companies in the world, the other one's in Italy, that makes the swabs used for testing.

“We are now at 20 million tests,” Trump said. “Very shortly we will be well over 20 million tests."

The visit touted the medical device manufacturer's ability to ramp up production from 10 million swabs a month to 20 million, and eventually 40 million, after a $75.7 million grant this spring tied to Trump's order that the plant increase manufacturing under the Defense Production Act.

While the company's limited space in Guilford, as well as difficulty in hiring in sparsely populated Piscataquis County, made an increase in production difficult, Cianbro Corp. offered a largely unused 144,000-square foot warehouse in Pittsfield, 30 miles south of Guilford in Somerset County.

The expansion includes 40 new swab-making machines, 30 of which are being made by Bath Iron Works, which is hiring 10 subcontractors to help with the work. The building renovation by Cianbro was fast-tracked and expected to be ready by July 1.

Trump, LePage take aim at Mills

Trump and LePage also took aim at how Mills is handling the state's reopening, with LePage charging that "she's allowing people to collect $600 unemployment when they go back to work, so people aren't going back to work."

Trump called her a "dictator" who is not allowing the state to reopen, though under the reopening plan, 13 of the state's 16 counties have reopened in many industries.

Mills said, “What Maine people heard today was more of the same incendiary rhetoric and insults he uses to try to divide us and to stoke tension and fear. What Maine people heard today was largely devoid of fact and absent of reality. What Maine people saw today was a rambling, confusing, thinly veiled political rally.

“I have spent the better part of my career listening to loud men talk tough to disguise their weakness. That’s what I heard today," she said. "I don’t care what the President says about me. I care what he does for Maine people. And that’s not very much."

Trump at the Puritan visit repeated his criticism of Mills' reopening plan, and also touted progress on the border wall with Mexico and talked about the increase in employment in the U.S. during May, when 3 million people went back to work.