Saving Seafood

Offshore wind foes ask Trump’s Interior secretary to halt all projects

February 21, 2025 — Dozens of offshore wind opponents are lobbying the new Interior secretary to revoke authorizations for the energy projects and order an immediate stop to construction, including at Vineyard Wind, citing concerns over whales and other marine species.

President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 order on offshore wind has already had a chilling effect on the industry. It halted leasing and permitting, and ordered Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to not only review all projects and permits, but also consider terminating leases and rescinding approvals.

This Feb. 11 request from the groups, submitted in a letter, is seeking to fast-track possible actions by the Interior Department before it completes its project-wide review.

The status of that review is unclear. The Interior Department did not provide a comment on the letter, or answer questions from The Light about the secretary’s review of permitted offshore wind projects, what it entails, and when it might be completed.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

US confirms Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary amid uncertainty over NOAA’s future

February 20, 2025 — The U.S. Senate voted to confirm Howard Lutnick as the secretary of the Department of Commerce despite fears that the Trump administration plans to cut NOAA funding or dismantle the agency altogether.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Commerce, which oversees such agencies as NOAA, was confirmed on a 51-45 vote, with no Democrat senators supporting his nomination.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Senate confirms Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary, a key role for Trump’s trade agenda

February 18, 2025 — As Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick will oversee NOAA, which includes the National Marine Fisheries Service. The following excerpt is from an article by the Associated Press:

The Senate confirmed wealthy financier Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary Tuesday, putting in place a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump’s hardline trade polices.

At the Commerce Department, Lutnick, who was CEO at the investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald, will oversee 50,000 employees who do everything from collecting economic statistics to running the census to issuing weather reports. But he’s likely to spend a lot of time — along with Jamieson Greer, Trump’s nominee to be the top U.S. trade negotiator — managing the president’s aggressive plans to impose import taxes on U.S. trading partners, including allies and adversaries alike.

The Senate vote to confirm Lutnick was 51-45.

Trump views the tariffs as a versatile economic tool. They can raise money to finance his tax cuts elsewhere, protect U.S. industries and pressure other countries into making concessions on such issues as their own trade barriers, immigration and drug trafficking. Mainstream economists mostly view tariffs as counterproductive: They are paid by import companies in the United States, which try to pass along the higher costs to consumers and can thereby add to inflationary pressures throughout the economy.

Read the full article at the Associated Press 

US judge orders Trump end USAID funding freeze

February 14, 2025 — A U.S. federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore funding for foreign aid through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), temporarily frustrating the president’s efforts to shut down the agency.

At the beginning of February, members of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency entered the USAID headquarters, closed its offices, furloughed its employees, and shut down its funding.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

As Trump escalates trade war, analysts tell shippers to expect the unexpected

February 14, 2025 — U.S. president Donald Trump announced that he would impose reciprocal tariffs on the nation’s trading partners on 13 February, prompting numerous trade experts to predict higher prices for American consumers. 

Shortly after Trump announced the measures, Capital Economics, a global financial analytics firm, told the New York Times that it “predicts that the effective tariff rate on all U.S. imports could rise from less than 3 percent now to around 20 percent.” The effective tariff rate is the percentage of the price of imported goods that goes toward paying tariffs. 

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Longtime NOAA staffer acting as head of fisheries agency amid Trump transition

February 14, 2025 — Longtime NOAA staffer Emily Menashes is currently leading NOAA Fisheries amid a leadership gap following the resignation of Assistant Administrator for NOAA Fisheries Janet Coit last month.

The appointment is part of a temporary churn of leadership positions at the U.S. Department of Commerce as leaders appointed by then U.S. President Joe Biden step down to make room for U.S. President Donald Trump’s picks. As the Biden administration came to an end in January, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, NOAA Administrator Richard Spinrad, and NOAA Fisheries head Coit all resigned, leaving the nation’s top fisheries management positions needing to be filled.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Closure of USAID fishery, aquaculture programs will hurt US seafood sector, aquaculture consultant warns

February 14, 2025 — The administration of U.S. Donald Trump has set plans in motion to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in a move that some experts are warning will have long-lasting effects on the U.S.’s own seafood sector.

Kevin Fitzsimmons, an aquaculture specialist and an environmental science professor at the University of Arizona, has consulted on USAID aquaculture projects in Myanmar, among other locations, and said that the recent funding freeze will have negative ripple effects across the globe.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

NEW JERSEY: Is NOAA’s Sandy Hook lab at risk from funding freeze? ‘Bad news for fishermen’

February 14, 2025 — NOAA’s James J. Howard Marine Sciences Lab in Sandy Hook is in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump’s freeze on federal funding, Rep. Frank Pallone said this week.

Pallone, a Democrat and ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said $5 million in Inflation Reduction Act funding is unavailable which is putting jobs, research and critical infrastructure at the lab at risk.

The lab’s seawater intake supply infrastructure, essential for the lab’s core function, was set to be rehabilitated using IRA funds. Pallone said the freeze means the system is in jeopardy of total failure by April when contracts for critical maintenance staff expire. He said the system must now be manually shut down each night when maintenance staff leaves.

Read the full article at Asbury Park Press

Focus: Trump hostility to US offshore wind reverberates through supply chain

February 13, 2025 — Companies that committed to investments in U.S. offshore wind infrastructure and supply chains are scrapping their plans as the projects they were meant to serve face huge setbacks, including President Donald Trump’s plan to end federal support.

The pullback reflects the trickle-down effect of a dramatic downturn in the U.S. offshore wind industry over the past two years that has caused lengthy delays, cost increases and even failures of many of the nation’s proposed offshore wind farm projects. It could cost thousands of planned jobs and billions of dollars in investments.

Read the full article at Reuters

Monumental Issues

February 13, 2025 — One of the requests made by the authors of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for the Trump administration, is that President Donald Trump again shrink national monuments.

Whether he will remains to be seen, though the most likely candidates are Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, from which Trump sheared a combined 2 million acres during his first term, only to watch President Joe Biden restore the original boundaries as set by Presidents Barack Obama (Bears Ears) and Bill Clinton (Grand Staircase).

The authors of Project 2025 don’t want him to stop there. Indeed, the section on the Interior Department, written by William Perry Pendley, who was a longtime president of the conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation that worked to see federal lands turned over to states, maintains that Trump didn’t go far enough during his first term.

“Although President Trump courageously ordered a review of national monument designations, the result of that review was insufficient in that only two national monuments in one state (Utah) were adjusted,” wrote Pendley. “Monuments in Maine [Kathadin Woods and Waters] and Oregon [Cascade-Siskiyou], for example, should have been adjusted downward given the finding of Secretary Ryan Zinke’s review that they were improperly designated.”

The 5,000-square-mile Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument encompasses a biologically robust area located about 100 miles southeast of Cape Cod National Seashore. It became the Atlantic Ocean’s first national monument when Obama established it. President Trump during his first term removed restrictions that kept commercial fishermen out of the monument.

Read the full article at National Park Traveler