February 6, 2026 — The International Pacific Halibut Commission set the 2026 harvest at a historic low during an annual meeting that drew a Trump Administration political appointee to lead tense U.S. negotiations with Canada over shares of a shrunken fishery.
The four-day late-January gathering in Bellevue, Washington came during a time of tumultuous relations between the two nations.
President Donald Trump’s tariff policy and blustering talk of making Canada part of the United States have spurred widespread anger among Canadians. January has been particularly volatile, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, at an economic forum in Davos, Switzerland, attacked “coercion” by great powers, while Trump, in a subsequent speech, asserted that “Canada lives because of the United States.”
At the Bellevue halibut meeting, Drew Lawler, a political appointee to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, served as the non-voting head of the U.S.delegation.
In private talks sandwiched between public parts of the meeting, the U.S. delegation threatened economic sanctions, and successfully pressured Canadians to trim the British Columbia share of the halibut harvest, according to sources with knowledge of these discussions.
The commission is charged by a more than century-old treaty with conserving Pacific halibut. There are three voting representatives from the United States, and three from Canada.