David Horner has worked the cold North Atlantic off Maine for half a century and has voted for Donald Trump three times. He supports the president's rollback of environmental regulations affecting commercial fishing operations like his own. But he is, he told Al Jazeera, “totally against” the president's antagonistic approach to Canada, Maine's neighbour and a country deeply entwined with the state's lobster industry.
"I never heard anything about all this Canadian animosity in the campaign. I don't know where that came from," Horner said.
Maine's lobster fisheries brought in $461m in 2025, and much of the trade runs through Canada: an estimated 60 percent of the catch is sent north for processing into lobster tails, meat and bisque, with some of it returning to the US for sale. In August, Trump imposed tariffs on $20bn worth of Canadian goods while alleging unfair treatment of US products. Canada retaliated, then lifted its levies on seafood later that month.
"As soon as those tariffs went out, the screaming, literally and figuratively, in Maine and Canada was quite loud," said Justin Snyder, who works in the Maine lobster industry and is also a Democratic strategist.
Costs have climbed on several fronts. Diesel averaged $3.08 a gallon before the US and Israel began their war on Iran and has since more than doubled to $6.29, hitting record highs in September, while tariffs on foreign steel and aluminium have added costs for an industry that relies on the metals to manufacture its traps. “The high diesel fuel is the biggest enemy of the fishing industry,” Horner said.
The Senate race is tight. Jackson, the former president of the Maine State Senate, was leading by four percentage points in a recent CNN poll and by two in a Marist survey, the latter within the margin of error. Collins, who has been in the Senate for roughly three decades, has voted in line with Trump's position on 92 percent of Senate votes during his second term, which began in January 2025, but has broken with him on tariffs. In April 2025 she voted to overturn tariffs on Canadian goods, later that month she backed a resolution to end his sweeping global tariffs, and in August she pushed back against the White House over tariffs affecting seafood.
During their most recent debate, Collins touted her efforts to secure tariff exemptions for products such as road salt. Jackson pushed back, saying, "We can't eat road salt."
"Troy spent most of his life working along the Canadian border, so he knows how important this relationship is to Maine's economy, and he sees Trump's tariffs for what they are: a tax on Maine families and small businesses," a spokesperson for Jackson said in a statement provided to Al Jazeera. The Collins campaign did not respond to Al Jazeera's request for comment.
On October 30, ahead of the midterms, Trump removed 50 percent tariffs on some Canadian goods, including certain machinery and packaging products, while his administration extended the tariffs to other goods, including certain waste products.
Snyder argues the trade tensions carry a longer-term cost. Canada has deepened ties with other countries, a move that potentially puts US exporters at a disadvantage. “Our competitors, namely Canada, are now trading for the most part with those countries tariff-free or with very low tariffs. If we can't compete with that, we have fewer markets to sell to, which puts downward pressure on the prices paid to fishermen,” he said. In China, Canadian lobster faces a 7 percent tariff against 17 percent for Maine lobster. Warming waters are a further pressure: lobsters thrive in colder seas and are migratory, and could shift farther north into Canadian waters.
Lance Dutson, a Maine Republican strategist, said he did not think people would point to Collins over the tariffs. “The Canada tariffs are just the dumbest thing in the world. I don't think there's anybody up here, Republican or Democrat, who can imagine why we're involved in this thing,” he told Al Jazeera. “I don't think that's something people are going to point to Susan Collins on, though. I think she's made it pretty obvious that she's worked to try to mitigate those things.”
Horner plans to vote for Collins, but his support for the president has grown complicated. "I wish I could forget about everything else. I would be OK with him," he said.