April 23, 2024 — When you think of “free fish,” you’re likely to remember those generous fishermen who dropped a fresh silver salmon on your doorstep or loaded your freezer with offerings of halibut, cod and crab.
But when Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) uses the term, it’s in the context of “Communist fish,” which he links to Russia (the former Soviet Union) and China.
Appearing at two ComFish events last weekend, Sullivan touted some of the work he and his colleagues have been doing in Washington, D.C., including the passage of legislation that placed an embargo on Russian fish products coming into this country.
“It took too damn long, but we finally got it done,” he said, to applause.
To no avail, Sullivan and his colleagues tried to get the Obama and Trump administrations to put an embargo on imported Russian fish.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when the Biden administration was putting together “a big sanctions package, I went to the White House and said, ‘Now is the time to fix this to a level playing field.’ To their credit they did it. It took a war to fix this,” Sullivan said.