Saving Seafood

MPA, invasive species advisory panels killed by Trump lacked commercial fishing voice

October 2, 2019 — The US commercial fishing industry isn’t likely to shed many tears over the recent news that the president Donald Trump administration is disbanding two federal advisory boards focused on maintaining marine protected areas (MPAs) and battling invasive species, Bob Vanasse, the founder of industry advocacy group Saving Seafood, told Undercurrent News.

The panels were improperly constituted, including many representatives from ocean conservation groups and even the recreational fishing industry but none from commercial harvesters, he said.

The government will no longer fund the Marine Protected Areas Federal Advisory Committee run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) or the Department of the Interior’s (DOI’s) Invasive Species Advisory Committee, the two agencies confirmed on Tuesday. Both panels have been in operation for more than a decade.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Trump administration loses bid to dismiss monument lawsuits

October 2, 2019 — A federal judge has rejected the Trump administration’s bid to dismiss lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of a 2017 decision to downsize two sprawling national monuments in Utah.

U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan’s written decisions issued Monday night means the legal challenges seeking to return the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments to their original sizes can move forward.

Chutkan didn’t decide the key question at the core of the lawsuits: Does the Antiquities Act give presidents the power to create monuments as well as reduce them?

The government has already created new management plans for the downsized monuments. President Donald Trump downsized Bears Ears by 85% and Grand Staircase by nearly half.

The lawsuits were filed by environmental organizations, tribal coalitions, an outdoor recreation company and a paleontology organization.

Those groups celebrated getting over an initial hurdle as they attempt to reverse decisions they say left sensitive lands and sites vulnerable to damage. Lands cut from the monuments are still under protections afforded to federal lands but are now open to oil and gas drilling and coal mining.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

President’s windmill hatred is a worry for booming industry

October 1, 2019 — The winds are blowing fair for America’s wind power industry, making it one of the fastest-growing U.S. energy sources.

Land-based turbines are rising by the thousands across America, from the remote Texas plains to farm towns of Iowa. And the U.S. wind boom now is expanding offshore, with big corporations planning $70 billion in investment for the country’s first utility-scale offshore wind farms.

“We have been blessed to have it,” says Polly McMahon, a 13th-generation resident of Block Island, where a pioneering offshore wind farm replaced the island’s dirty and erratic diesel-fired power plant in 2016. “I hope other people are blessed too.”

But there’s an issue. And it’s a big one. President Donald Trump hates wind turbines.

He’s called them “disgusting” and “ugly” and “stupid,” denouncing them in hundreds of anti-wind tweets and public comments dating back more than a decade, when he tried and failed to block a wind farm near his Scottish golf course.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Trump aide offers no guidance on Vineyard Wind

September 30, 2019 — A Trump Administration official attending a conference in Boston on Friday repeatedly refused to say when the agency’s review of the Vineyard Wind project would be completed.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management put the offshore wind farm on hold indefinitely in early August while it tries to gain a better understanding of the cumulative impact of the many East Coast wind farm projects currently in the pipeline. With the project in danger of being canceled if the delay lasts too long, James Bennett, the renewable energy program manager at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, gave no indication of when the agency’s review will be completed.

“It’s going to take some time, longer than we expected for this project,” said Bennett, who was asked about the agency’s timetable by Attorney General Maura Healey’s chief of staff, Mike Firestone. Bennett was at the Sheraton Boston Hotel taking part in an offshore wind panel at an eastern region meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General.

After the panel was over, Bennett again refused to elaborate.  “We’re working on a schedule to complete whatever we have to do to keep the project moving forward,” he said.

Read the full story at Commonwealth Magazine

MASSACHUSETTS: Gov. Charlie Baker: Not concerned by Trump’s wind comment

August 29, 2019 — The future of Vineyard Wind is on hold amid a longer-than-expected federal review and President Donald Trump dismissed wind power as costly “dreams” this week, but Gov. Charlie Baker said he is not concerned that the government has any plans to block the offshore wind project.

Federal regulators, who have been auctioning off ocean tracts to wind energy developers, jolted the offshore wind industry this month when they announced that a key environmental impact statement Vineyard Wind needs to advance, originally expected by March 2020 at the latest, would be paused to allow for a broader study of the effects that such turbines would cause.

Baker, who moments earlier touted the implementation of a statewide partnership to enact a climate-resiliency plan, told reporters Wednesday that he remains confident about the project’s future, describing his conversations with Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and officials at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management as productive despite the uncertainty.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

US, Japan agree to outline of trade deal

August 26, 2019 — Japan and the United States have agreed in principle to an outline of a free trade agreement, with plans to complete it by September.

The announcement, which calls for negotiations on a bilateral trade deal, was made 25 August by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the G7 meeting taking place in Biarritz, France.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Trump escalates US-China trade war with tariff increases

August 26, 2019 — Soon after China moved on 23 August to raise tariffs on USD 75 billion (EUR 67.4 billion) of U.S. goods, U.S. President Donald Trump retaliated with another increase to tariffs on Chinese goods.

China’s escalation of its tariffs on U.S. goods hit the seafood industry once again, increasing the tariffs on salmon, lobster, pollock, cod, squid, crab to 35 percent, exempting raw material for processing and re-export. The previous tariffs already had a significant impact on some sectors of the seafood industry – lobster exports from Maine to China plunged 84 percent after the tariffs took effect.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Trump says US “better off without” China after latest tariff escalation

August 25, 2019 — China moved on Friday, 23 August to raise tariffs on USD 75 billion (EUR 67.3 billion) in American goods, in response to a move made at the beginning of the month by U.S. President Donald Trump to raise tariffs on Chinese goods.

China’s new tariffs – ranging between 5 and 10 percent – will affect goods ranging from soybeans to crude oil to automobiles, and also include additional tariffs for seafood. They will go into effect between September and December, mirroring the dates set by Trump in his revised timeline for implementing the latest round of U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods. Most U.S. seafood exported to China will will be subject to an additional 10 percent tariff on 1 September, raising Chinese tariffs on U.S. seafood as high as 35 percent.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Suppressed federal report shows how Trump water plan would endanger California salmon

August 22, 2019 — Federal officials suppressed a lengthy environmental document that details how one of California’s unique salmon runs would be imperiled by Trump administration plans to deliver more water to Central Valley farms.

The July 1 assessment, obtained by the Los Angeles Times, outlines how proposed changes in government water operations would harm several species protected by the Endangered Species Act, including perilously low populations of winter-run salmon, as well as steelhead trout and killer whales, which feed on salmon.

But the 1,123-page document was never released.

Read the full story at The Sacramento Bee

Tariffs changing shopping habits of US consumers

August 16, 2019 — More U.S. shoppers are noticing price increases for the products they buy regularly, and a majority of them plan to reexamine their shopping habits if U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods remain in place, according to a new survey.

Shopkick, the operator of a shopping rewards app, surveyed more than 30,000 of its users between 28 and 30 June, and found 44 percent of respondents planned to cut down on their shopping as a result of raised prices on consumer goods, the result of tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump on practically all Chinese goods, valued at more than USD 550 billion (EUR 495.6 billion) in annual trade.

Read the full story at Seafood Source