Louisiana

Louisiana's economy is built on what flows through it — oil, chemicals, grain, and container ships — making it a chokepoint for tariff impacts that reverberate nationally. The Port of South Louisiana and Port of New Orleans together form the largest port complex in the Western Hemisphere by tonnage, handling 500 million tons annually. Soybeans, corn, and wheat from the entire Mississippi River basin funnel through Louisiana's grain elevators for export — retaliatory tariffs on these crops directly reduce volumes through the state's ports. Louisiana's petrochemical corridor along the Mississippi between Baton Rouge and New Orleans — 'Cancer Alley' — is the densest concentration of chemical plants in the Western Hemisphere, exporting refined products, plastics, and LNG globally. Tariffs on imported specialty chemicals disrupt feedstocks, while retaliatory measures threaten export markets. The state's massive LNG export capacity (Sabine Pass, Cameron) depends on Asian and European buyers who may reduce purchases amid trade tensions. Louisiana's seafood industry — Gulf shrimp, crawfish, oysters — faces cheap imports from tariff-exempt countries while its own exports face retaliation.