If U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs could bring manufacturing back to places it has fled, the town of Millinocket, Maine, ought to be a likely candidate.
Millinocket was for decades a thriving paper mill town, until Great Northern Paper ceased operations in 2008. Its fenced-off property sits abandoned, and although there’s a growing outdoor recreation sector in the town of 4,100, its economy has struggled ever since.
Then came a plan, backed in part by Norwegian investors, for a $300 million US aquaculture venture repurposing the giant lagoons on the old mill site, to be called Great Northern Salmon.
“It was a marriage made in heaven,” said Gail Fanjoy, the president of the local chamber of commerce. “Out of the gate, they were going to employ 50 people. That’s a home run.”
The project was about 80 per cent toward completion when the company announced last month it was pausing indefinitely, resting blame squarely on the uncertainty caused by the Trump administration’s tariffs. Much of its salmon farming equipment was to be imported from Canada.
“That was a huge, huge, huge blow,” Fanjoy told CBC News. “The Norwegian investors just said, ‘We’re done, we just can’t deal with this.'”
One of the abandoned buildings on the former site of Great Northern Paper in Millinocket, Maine. A new $300 million US aquaculture venture repurposing the lagoons on the site, to be called Great Northern Salmon, was put on hold last month over what its backers described as the volatility caused by the Trump administration’s tariffs. » Read More
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