Saving Seafood

Trump’s NOAA pick stands by budget cuts, calls staffing ‘a top priority’

July 10, 2025 — President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told a panel of U.S. senators on Wednesday that he would make it “a top priority” to fill staffing shortages created by recent firings and buyouts across the National Weather Service, while also standing by the administration’s proposal to make drastic cuts to weather and climate research budgets.

In a confirmation hearing imbued with concern over how to prevent disasters like the deadly Texas floods, Neil Jacobs shared ideas such as using satellites to improve severe weather warnings and “modernizing” NOAA’s weather radios, which use radio signals to broadcast emergency information. Jacobs was not asked to weigh in on what may or may not have contributed to the disaster in Texas. But he stressed a desire to see the more than 120 Weather Service forecast offices across the country be fully staffed.

As Jacobs answered senators’ questions, he signaled a future in which the agency’s sprawling weather and climate research enterprise could be diminished and more closely tied to the process of weather forecasting. And he repeatedly hinted at opportunities for government scientists to collaborate with the private sector, something that Republican strategists emphasized in the policy plan known as Project 2025.

Read the full article at The Washington Post

Trump threatens Brazil with 50 percent tariffs; Brazil promises to respond in kind

July 10, 2025 — U.S. President Donald Trump has sent a letter to Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that threatens the country with a 50 percent tariff as of 1 August over claims the country was treating former President Jair Bolsonaro unfairly.

The letter comes after Trump, in a 7 July post on his Truth Social social media site, claimed the trial of Jair Bolsonaro was a “witch hunt.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

National Restaurant Association expects One Big Beautiful Bill to benefit US restaurant operators

July 10, 2025 — The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, an omnibus piece of U.S. legislation that President Donald Trump signed into law on 4 July, includes tax policies that will strengthen the U.S. foodservice industry, according to the National Restaurant Association (NRA).

“The pro-growth tax policy in this bill will make it easier to start a restaurant and to continue to improve and modernize as the business grows. It lays the groundwork for long-term innovation, job creation, and economic growth, ensuring restaurants can continue to meet evolving consumer needs and power the U.S. economy,” NRA President and CEO Michelle Korsmo said.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Dealing with Trump’s megabill remains a work in progress

July 9, 2025 — On July 3, the U.S. House narrowly passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, sweeping federal legislation that extends tax cuts and reduces social safety net programs. President Trump signed the bill into law during a ceremony held the following day.

For coastal fishing communities endeavoring to protect access to their fisheries and fisheries habitats, efforts to deal with the legislation remain a work in progress.

One possible saving grace was that before it went to the House, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, dropped from the H.R. 1 package in the Senate a contentious plan to sell between 2.2 million and 3.3 million acres of public lands in 11 western states for the construction of housing.

“Public land sales or privatization could cut off lifelines to water, or at the very least, create disruptive and unnecessary uncertainty,” said Michelle Stratton, a fisheries scientist and executive director of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council in Anchorage. “Without reliable public access to harbors, fish camps, and boat ramps, especially on or near federal lands, Alaska’s small boat fishermen can’t operate or know how to prepare for their season.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

EPA ‘open to reconsideration’ of Alaska’s Pebble mine — DOJ

July 8, 2025 — Some Trump administration officials are open to reconsidering its prior opposition to the contentious Pebble mine in Alaska’s pristine Bristol Bay watershed, which is a prime salmon habitat, according to federal lawyers.

Attorneys with the Department of Justice said in recent court filings that EPA officials are considering a veto the agency issued in 2023 under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act that halted the open-pit copper and gold mine. The mine has drawn considerable pushback given it would be built near the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery.

“Agency officials remain open to reconsideration, and Defendants and [Pebble Limited Partnership] are negotiating to explore a potential settlement,” Adam Gustafson, acting assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division, wrote in a Thursday legal filing.

Read the full article at E&E News

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act includes several seafood provisions

July 8, 2025 — U.S. President Donald Trump has signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, an omnibus piece of legislation enacting the president’s policy preferences into law.

While the U.S. Senate made substantial changes to the bill before passing it, several seafood provisions included in early versions of the legislation survived the final cut, and a few additional carveouts were added for the Alaska fishing sector during last-minute negotiations.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Trump plans tariff pause, threatens higher tariffs on BRICS countries, South Korea, and Japan

July 7, 2025 — U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to add an additional 10 percent tariff to any country aligned with BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and then later threatened 25 percent tariffs as of 1 August on China, South Korea, and Japan, just before the White house announced his intention to extend the “liberation day” tariff pause to 1 August.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told media on 7 July that Trump was planning to sign an order to extend the pause on the steepest tariffs until 1 August. She also said Trump was planning to send letters to other countries about the new rates they would face if they did not negotiate new deals with the U.S.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

MARYLAND: Gov. stands behind offshore wind for OC coast

June 27, 2025 — As President Donald Trump continues to tweet against windmills, Maryland’s governor says his office hasn’t been in communication with the White House over a proposed offshore mid-Atlantic wind farm that’s in the final stages of approval at the state level.

“No, we haven’t had any communication with the Trump administration on this project specifically,” Moore said in an interview Tuesday with OC Today-Dispatch. The governor is in Ocean City for the annual summer conference of the Maryland Municipal League.

“I know some of the challenges that the administration has and we hear them loud and clear,” he added. “The thing that I want for everybody to hear loud and clear is that in the state of Maryland, we have got to come up with more energy options. We’ve got to come up with a more sustainable and affordable way for people to be able to harness energy. We have to do more to invest in our grid. We have to do more to make sure that we are not solely reliant on individual or independent sources of energy.”

Moore added he’s looking forward to working with the federal government “to figure out just where exactly they are, and what they will support and fund, because federal involvement does matter in these projects, we cannot deny that.”

During his 2024 campaign, Trump said he’d end offshore wind with an executive order “on Day 1.” Once he took office in January, the President continued to make overtures about stomping out offshore wind projects, calling them “an economic and environmental disaster” that only work with government subsidies.

Read the full article at OC Today-Dispatch

Fisheries council tightens its belt as funding comes ‘in dribs and drabs’

June 25, 2025 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, a federal board that helps oversee federal fisheries off Alaska’s coast, is scaling back operations due to uncertainty over federal funding.

The council meets five times a year to help set fishing policies, like quotas, regulations and bycatch restrictions. But federal budget cuts under President Donald Trump have whittled down the organization’s resources, forcing them to scale back their activities.

At a meeting earlier this month, the council said it had received less than half of its federal funds. They got another payment last week, but Executive Director David Witherell said they’ve still only received about two-thirds of their annual funding. Typically, the council receives full funding by March.

“This is a highly unusual situation that we’re in,” Witherell said. “We can normally be able to plan our meeting schedule for the year and not have to worry that the Council offices might have to close because we run out of funds to pay staff.”

The funding is disbursed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as part of a four-year grant. This is the first year of that grant cycle — and Witherell said they’re starting from zero, with no rollover from the previous year.

He said the council has been told to expect another installment once Congress finalizes a federal spending plan. But for now, there’s no timeline and no guarantee.

“The funding this year has been coming in dribs and drabs, and it’s making it challenging to reserve meeting spaces and to know that we have the funds to host a meeting,” Witherell said.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Offshore wind stalls as Trump’s hostility deepens

June 23, 2o25 — President Donald Trump was at a bill signing last week when he veered onto one of his favorite topics: wind energy.

“The windmills are killing our country by the way,” the president said before signing bills to block California’s gas car phase-out. Wind turbines are “garbage,” he said, as well as “bullshit,” “horrible” and “very expensive to paint.”

“We’re not going to approve windmills unless something happens that’s an emergency,” Trump said. “I guess it could happen, but we’re not doing any of them.”

That near-total opposition to wind has been particularly catastrophic to the offshore industry, squelching investments and halting ongoing projects in their tracks at a time when Northeast states are desperate for more power. POLITICO’s E&E News found that about a dozen East Coast wind projects planned during the Biden administration are now in purgatory, potentially collapsing a portfolio that could power hundreds of thousands of homes.

More projects could falter if Republicans follow through with their plans in Congress to gut clean energy tax credits, industry advocates say.

“We’ve seen a chilling effect across the industry from the administration’s stance on offshore wind, and subsequent damaging executive orders,” said Katharine Kollins, president of the Southeastern Wind Coalition.

On his first day in office, Trump withdrew all federal waters from offshore wind leasing and ordered a review of all wind leasing and permitting. His executive order directs agencies to not “issue new or renewed approvals, rights of way, permits, leases, or loans for onshore or offshore wind projects pending the completion of a comprehensive assessment and review.”

The White House did not answer questions from E&E News about the status of that review. But analysts do not expect it to be completed.

“It was not written with the purpose of being transparent and encouraging,” said Jonathan Elkind, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “Anybody in the industry must assume that barring some wholesale change of heart, perhaps driven by new policy perspectives … from the Trump administration and from the president, it’s really hard to imagine how there’s going to be a lot of progress.”

Read the full article at E&E News