Tariffs come for the Friday fish fry
Marketplace Morning Report
Marketplace
4.5 • 927 Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2026
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Some Christians observe the weeks of Lent leading up to Easter by not eating meat on Fridays. That means that we’re in the thick of fish fry season. Thing is, tariffs have raised the price of seafood. We head to one local fish fry near Akron, Ohio, to learn about the impact. But first, the war in the Middle East is threatening critical water desalination plants, which many Gulf countries rely on to make seawater potable.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The latest target in the war? Water. From Marketplace, I'm Sabri Beneshore in for David Brancaccio. |
| 0:08.1 | The U.S. and Israel's war with Iran is disrupting the flow of oil. We know that. Liquid natural gas, too, and fertilizer and aluminum and helium. |
| 0:16.9 | And add to that growing list, water. Many Gulf countries rely on desalination plants for drinking water. |
| 0:24.5 | And already in this war, Iran has accused the U.S. of attacking one of its plants. |
| 0:29.3 | And Bahrain says Iran hit and damaged a plant there with a drone. Marketplaces, Samantha Fields, has more. |
| 0:36.2 | Water has always been an issue in the Middle East. |
| 0:38.7 | It's a very arid region. |
| 0:40.6 | It's a region with a very large and growing population and a growing economy |
| 0:44.6 | and growing demands on the limited water resources. |
| 0:47.8 | Peter Glick at the Nonprofit Pacific Institute says many Gulf countries have invested heavily |
| 0:52.2 | in desalination plants, which can make seawater potable. |
| 0:55.5 | Kuwait and Oman get about 90% of their water from desalination. In Saudi Arabia, it's about 70%. |
| 1:01.3 | If desalination plants were to come under systematic attack, it would be incredibly devastating for the region. |
| 1:07.0 | It would be enormously harmful to the economies. |
| 1:09.9 | Some countries have very little potable water stored and could run out quickly, which would have ripple effects for drinking water and most industries, including farming, oil production, and tourism. |
| 1:20.8 | International law prohibits attacks on civilian infrastructure, but David Mikkel at the Center for Strategic and International Studies says that |
| 1:27.9 | hasn't prevented them. In the first Persian Gulf War in 1991, Iraqi forces not only deliberately |
| 1:35.2 | destroyed desalination facilities in Kuwait on land, but they also dumped millions of barrels of |
| 1:41.4 | oil into the Persian Gulf. And that oil clog the intakes for Kuwait's |
| 1:47.1 | desaladed water supply. More recently, Russia has attacked critical water infrastructure in Ukraine, |
| 1:52.9 | and Israel has done the same in Gaza and the West Bank. We're increasingly seeing its use |
| 1:57.6 | as it means to try and force concessions and raise the costs of conflict. |
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