Which products Americans are searching amid India-US trade deal

Indian textiles, diamonds and jewellery dominate exports globally, but American interest appears to rest with a far smaller commodity, a tiny crustacean.

Even as the fine print on the trade deal with the United States remains hazy, Donald Trump’s decision to lower reciprocal tariffs on India from 50 per cent to 18 per cent has been met with relief for not only Indians but America’s seafood-loving consumers.

As Trump moved to lower tariff rates, Indian equity markets responded almost immediately, with shrimp exporters among the clearest beneficiaries. Stocks of seafood export companies rallied in anticipation of improved access to the US market.

Parallel signs emerged in the digital sphere as well. An analysis by India Today’s OSINT team shows that among major Indian export categories tracked through search data, American online interest in shrimp consistently recorded the sharpest spikes around key moments of tariff escalation and rollback.

Tiny, antennaed and easily overlooked at home, the shrimp became an unlikely casualty of a modern trade war. In many Bengali homes, it is often waved off as an insect; but in America, it is a dinner-table staple that Americans have come to expect— boiled, battered and buttered — found in everything from classic Louisiana stews and shrimp cocktails to popcorn shrimp.

More than 90 percent of the millions of pounds of shrimp consumed annually in the United States is imported, with a majority coming from India, Ecuador, Indonesia and Vietnam.

India is the world’s second-largest producer of shrimp – predominantly for export – after Ecuador. In the financial year ending March 2025, India exported frozen shrimp worth USD 500 crore globally, with the United States accounting for roughly 48 per cent of those sales.