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The Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay has big goals for its plants. 

The gardens are now looking to build several new facilities that would total 42,000 square feet and eventually include a collection of all native Maine plant life. 

Since opening in 2007, the gardens have drawn growing numbers of visitors to the midcoast — now more than 200,000 per year — with 300 acres of plants and grounds, as well as popular holiday light displays. But after that immense growth, the organization is now looking to focus more on its research capabilities. 

The expansion, which still requires local approval, would include a 10,770-square-foot administrative and laboratory building, a head house, two greenhouses, a storage building, three hoop houses and several outdoor planting areas. The project would likely cost between $20 million and $25 million, with private grants helping to fund it. Construction could begin as soon as this spring.

Gretchen Ostherr, president and CEO of the gardens, said the expansion would help to pursue the gardens’ larger goal of inspiring connections between people and nature. 

“A part of that design is really about teaching people about plants and about plant conservation, and just really trying to inspire a love of plants, especially in young people, but really kids of all ages,” Ostherr said. 

While the organization currently does field research on plants, it does not have any labs where its scientists can work. Introducing a lab would allow the gardens to take more student researchers, use molecular biology and bring more educational value for visitors, according to Ostherr. 

It would also allow the organization to begin storing more plants in a variety of ways. That would include a collection of seeds from native Maine plants that have been dried and frozen — or “cryo-preserved.” The researchers would also be able to expand their herbarium — which stores plants that have been pressed onto paper — from 20,000 to 100,000 specimens. Ostherr said DNA can be extracted from these specimens. 

Ostherr said the goal is to prevent any Maine plants from going extinct. The herbarium would initially gather specimens of all native plants in the state. Eventually, the organization hopes to gather specimens for all of them in northern New England.

“At the end of the day, we’re all reliant on the plants for life,” Ostherr said. “You know that we will at least have the DNA material, either in seeds or in the herbarium or in cryo-preservation, so that if something happens to a plant, we would have the ability to still study it and potentially even restore it.”

The new facilities would be located behind the back parking lot of the gardens and wouldn’t be open to the public, Ostherr said. However, guests would be updated on the ongoing research by educational signs and classes. 

Ostherr noted that the new facilities would be carbon neutral, using solar panels and electric heat pumps, as well as cisterns to collect and reuse rainwater.

President-elect Donald Trump will return to the Oval Office Monday and has vowed to carry out various “day one” priorities that could affect Maine.

Although the specifics of various pledges are still unclear or subject to changes from the mercurial Republican, the promises that could come to fruition as soon as Trump’s inauguration concludes Monday touch on everything from offshore wind to Jan. 6 rioters, among other issues.

His offshore wind ban is in the works.

Maine has failed to win a massive federal grant for a contentious offshore wind port that Gov. Janet Mills is proposing on Sears Island in Searsport, but that all may not matter if Trump carries through on his vows to halt offshore wind development.

Trump reportedly told U.S. Jeff Van Drew, R-New Jersey, to draft an executive order to halt wind projects. Van Drew told the Associated Press on Wednesday his draft order would halt offshore wind development from Rhode Island to Virginia for six months.

That could allow Trump’s interior secretary nominee, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, to review how leases and permits were issued. Under questioning from U.S. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, he would not commit Thursday to honoring existing leases but generally said projects that “make sense” and are currently in law would continue.

Time will tell if Maine is included. Outgoing President Joe Biden’s administration already started selling leases for areas in the Gulf of Maine that could power more than 4.5 million homes.

Pardons may be on the table for Jan. 6 rioters from Maine.

Trump has vowed to pardon as soon as next week rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and disrupted Congress as it certified Biden’s 2020 election victory, but he has not been clear on whether he will seek to pardon all of the more than 1,500 people who have been charged, with more than 1,000 sentenced so far, or only pardon non-violent offenders.

Roughly a dozen Mainers have been charged in connection with the deadly riot that featured attacks on law enforcement officers. Four Mainers have been charged with violent offenses, and not every case is resolved.

The most prominent defendant, Matthew Brackley, a former Maine Senate candidate from Waldoboro, is serving a 15-month prison sentence after he pleaded guilty to assaulting police. Kyle Fitzsimmons, of Lebanon, received a seven-year prison sentence in July 2023.

His Canada tariff plan already has Maine’s attention.

Trump has threatened to immediately slap 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico and higher rates on China. A delegation from Prince Edward Island is in Maine and other New England states this week to make the case for free trade.

Neighboring Canada is the state’s top trade partner, with wood products, seafood and mineral fuels among the key products that cross the border. Tariffs have previously played well politically in Maine but have hurt heritage industries at times, including during Trump’s first term.

U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat from the rural 2nd District, reintroduced his measure Thursday to create a universal 10 percent tariff. Golden pointed to a Congressional Budget Office analysis that found it would raise $2.2 trillion through 2032. But economists have also warned of higher prices for consumers and slower global growth under Trump’s plan.

“Tariffs can be very complicated, but at the end of the day, this is what it means: If it costs our goods and services 25 percent more to come across the border, they’re going to be costing Americans 25 percent more to consume them,” Prince Edward Island Premier Dennis King said.

Rep. Jared Golden, D-2nd District, at his home in Lewiston in October. Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald file

President-elect Donald Trump promised to impose sweeping tariffs. Days before Trump is set to take office, Maine’s 2nd District Rep. Jared Golden has introduced similar legislation — a 10% tariff on all imported goods.

It’s intended to protect Maine industries and workers against unfair competition, Golden said.

The Democrat from Lewiston, fresh off a narrow reelection win in November, said in an interview that his proposal would put the U.S. on more equal footing with trading partners that for years have protected their industries and workers. In contrast, Maine has lost jobs in manufacturing, lumber and other industries because the U.S. has failed to shield its workers and markets from unbalanced trade, he says.

“It’s a lie that we allowed ourselves to believe, that our allies around the world don’t pursue protectionist measures,” he said.

Golden pushed back against two arguments against tariffs: that the levies are inflationary because producers will pass added costs to consumers and that governments will retaliate against the U.S. with tariffs of their own.

He said an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office shows that a 10% “universal tariff” could spur a short-term increase in prices of some foreign goods and services, but would likely reduce the cost of other goods and services, drive up the incomes of American workers and have no long-term effect on inflation. Addressing the possibility of protectionist retaliation, Golden said U.S. markets are among the largest in the world widely sought by trading partners and other countries.

“For the time being, dollar for dollar, we’ll out-compete them. They need us,” Golden said.

Although the CBO report acknowledged no long-term inflationary impact, it predicts that cost increases would “put upward pressure on inflation over the first few years in which the tariffs were in place.” The analysis said increases in tariffs on U.S. imports and retaliation from trading partners over the next decade would reduce the size of the economy and increase businesses’ uncertainty about barriers to trade, cutting returns on new investments.

Golden told the Washington Post that no House Republican or Democrat has agreed to co-sponsor his bill.

Representatives of Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-1st district, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, did not respond to emails Thursday seeking their opinions of Golden’s legislation. A spokesman for Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said King is withholding comment on the issue of tariffs until more details emerge about policies developed by the Trump administration and Congress.

Kristin Vekasi, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Maine, argues that tariffs are inflationary and would likely lead to a cascade of policies and responses that could ultimately undermine Golden’s intent to protect jobs.

“There’s broad consensus about some aspects of tariffs,” she said. “The thing that we generally see with tariffs is they increase prices for consumers.”

That could prompt the Federal Reserve to again raise interest rates to fend off inflation, in turn prodding investors to shift money to bonds, increasing the value of the dollar that would make goods less competitive in global markets and hurting production and jeopardizing jobs, Vekasi said.

In addition, if retaliatory tariffs are imposed on hydropower from Canada and oil from other nations, higher energy costs would affect most industries, she said.

Stefano Tijerina, who teaches international business at the University of Maine Business School, said more than 50% of Maine’s trade is with Canada and tariffs “would affect us tremendously.” Lumber and tourists “mostly come from Canada” and lobsters fished off Maine typically end up in Canadian canneries, he said.

Many companies have moved to Canada and other nations to sell goods back to U.S. consumers, he said. “We’d be putting tariffs on our own products,” Tijerina said.

While Golden’s legislation can be interpreted as bolstering President-elect Donald Trump’s push for tariffs after he takes office Monday, Golden introduced similar legislation in September and said tariffs were established by President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden, both Democrats. A softwood lumber tariff dates to the Obama administration, he said, and Biden raised tariffs against China.

The 10% percent tariff would apply to all imported goods and services, and would increase or decrease by 5%, depending on whether the U.S. maintains a trade deficit or surplus.

Golden said job losses accelerated in the 1990s due to the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has become a magnet of anti-free trade animus that crosses political lines from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on the left to Trump on the right.

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