Saving Seafood

US-China tariffs: What’s behind them, who stands to be hurt?

July 5, 2018 — President Donald Trump has boldly declared that trade wars are easy to win. He’s about to find out.

Barring a last-minute breakthrough, the Trump administration on Friday will start imposing tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese imports. And China will promptly strike back with tariffs on an equal amount of U.S. exports.

And just like that, a high-risk trade war between the world’s two biggest economies will begin — one that could quickly escalate.

“I see us running into a full collision course in a few days,” said Ashley Craig, a trade lawyer at Venable LLP. “It seems as if both sides are fairly dug in.”

Here’s a look at what’s happening this week and its likely impact.

WHAT IS THE U.S. DOING?

The White House last month announced plans to slap 25 percent tariffs on roughly 1,100 goods imported from China, worth $50 billion a year. It had originally proposed the tariffs in April, starting with 1,333 Chinese products. After receiving public feedback, the administration cut 515 imports from the blacklist and added 284 others.

Starting Friday, the U.S. will tax 818 Chinese products, worth $34 billion a year, from the original list. It won’t target the 284 additions, worth $16 billion, until it gathers further public comments.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Gloucester Daily Times

NOAA chief backs away from comments about climate change

July 3, 2018 — The acting head of the U.S. agency that oversees the country’s oceans policy is downplaying remarks he recently made about climate change.

Last week, The Hill reported that Tim Gallaudet, the acting administrator for NOAA, gave a presentation at a conference put together by the U.S. Commerce Department where he floated a new mission statement for the agency. Gallaudet, a retired Navy rear admiral who also serves as the assistant commerce secretary for oceans and atmosphere, reports to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

Currently, NOAA’s mission statement begins with “To understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coasts.” In his presentation, Gallaudet offered an amended mission statement that read: “to observe, understand and predict atmospheric and ocean conditions.”

The Union of Concerned Scientists released the presentation to the public. After its release, Gallaudet issued a statement saying he intended his remarks to show how NOAA could find new ways to work with in the Commerce Department’s strategic plan. He said his presentation was not to be considered as a finished product, according to The Hill.

“Secretary Ross, the Department, and I support NOAA’s mission to understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans and coasts; to share that knowledge and information with others; and to conserve and manage coastal and marine ecosystems and resources,” Gallaudet said. “We are also fully aware of the congressional mandates and will continue to adhere to them.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Canadian tariffs on US goods go into effect, but spare seafood industry

July 3, 2018 — Canada has placed tariffs valued at CAD 16.6 billion (USD 12.6 billion, EUR 10.8 billion) on American products as retaliation for a 25-percent tariff on steel and 10-percent tariff on aluminum the United States instituted earlier this year by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Canada’s tariffs took effect 1 July – Canada Day. While the new tariffs affect goods ranging from beer kegs to ball point pens, orange juice to candy to bourbon, they appear to have largely spared the seafood industry.

It’s an extraordinary situation for the two countries which traditionally tout their undefended border, close relationship, and are the world’s second-largest trading block.

More than USD 1.5 billion (EUR 1.3 billion) in goods and more than 300,000 people cross the U.S. Canada border every day. The value of trade crossing the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan is equal to all of Japan’s exports to the U.S. Canada is a bigger market for U.S. goods than the 27 countries of the European Community. For example, 4,000 shipments of ingredients for Campbell’s Soup products cross from the US into Canada each day and 3,500 travel from Canada into the U.S.

Since introduction of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1985, there has been a 350 percent rise in trade between the U.S. and Canada. Canada is one of the top five investor nations in the U.S. and is America’s primary energy source (oil, natural gas, and electricity), while Saudi Arabia is number three.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

New Changes at NOAA Worry Some Scientists

July 2, 2018 — The federal agency that regulates what happens on, and in, the oceans is making some major policy changes, including some tweaks to its mission statement. That agency is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. WCAI’s Kathryn Eident talked with science correspondent and Living Lab Host Heather Goldstone to learn more.

Eident: Good morning, Heather. So, these changes were announced last week at a closed-door meeting, but some details have leaked, including new wording in NOAA’s mission statement. Can we talk about that?

Goldstone: Yes, so what happened was that there was a Department of Commerce vision-setting strategic meeting. And of course, NOAA is part of the Department of Commerce and the acting director of NOAA presented what could be NOAA’s contributions to that. The presentation that he made was leaked to the Union of Concerned Scientists and to certain media outlets, including us.

That new mission statement, if you will, was actually presented in the first part of the presentation as the ‘current’ mission statement, with what is still on the website, and what has been the mission statement as the ‘past mission’ statement. One of the changes that’s gotten a lot of attention this week is the fact that the word “climate” was dropped from the part of the mission statement that deals mostly with research. Perhaps the bigger change is actually in the end of the mission statement where that has said to, “conserve and manage coastal and marine ecosystems and resources” and the new version of that says, “to protect lives and property, empower the economy, and support homeland and national security.”

So, it’s a pretty dramatic change in what the goals of the organization would be. The acting director has since issued a statement saying that this was not intended to exclude NOAA’s important climate and conservation efforts, which are “essential for protecting lives and the environment,” and that this should not be considered a final proposal– that it was just kind of throwing some ideas out there. But, it has definitely grabbed people’s attention.

Read the full story at WCAI

MASSACHUSETTS: Sen. Elizabeth Warren pushes for new lobster markets

July 2, 2018 — U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren moved Friday to try to protect international markets for American lobsters, urging the U.S. trade representative to explore new markets to compensate for the detrimental impact of new Chinese import tariffs.

In a letter to Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative, Warren said the 25 percent tariffs to be imposed on American lobster imports after July 6 will economically harm American lobstermen and the fishing communities in which they live and operate their businesses.

“China is a large and growing market for lobsters, with total lobster imports from America topping $100 million in recent years,” Warren said in her letter. “Large Chinese tariffs on American lobster will effectively close off that market because China can substitute cheaper lobsters from Canada or Europe for American lobsters.”

The new Chinese tariffs on $50 billion worth of American goods, imposed in response to new tariffs ordered by President Donald Trump on Chinese imports into the United States, actually will mean that American lobster exporters will be paying the new 25 percent on top of the current 7 percent tariff — resulting in a tariff of 32 percent on imported American lobsters.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

JONATHAN WOOD: Land ahoy! Fishermen challenge presidential designations of ocean monuments

Jule 2, 2018 — This month, the Antiquities Act turned 112 years old. Originally conceived to protect Native American artifacts in the Southwest, the law has, like so many federal laws, been twisted over time by power-hungry government officials.

Controversy over the law’s abuse is coming to a head in New England, where fishermen are locked out of a large section of their fishery by the creation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. After spending years working to recover fish stocks and promote more sustainable fishing methods, they rightly see this move as a betrayal that threatens their livelihoods.

Why is a 112-year-old law so controversial today? The answer lies in the aggressive reinterpretation of the law by presidents seeking to expand their power.

Consider that in the law’s first century, Presidents Teddy Roosevelt through Bill Clinton collectively designated 70 million acres of national monuments. That’s a lot, to be sure, but it pales in comparison to the last 12 years. From 2006 to 2017, an additional 700 million acres were designated — a ten-fold increase over the prior century’s total.

What explains this explosion? It’s the interpretation of a single word: “land.” Congress limited the president’s monument power to “land owned or controlled by the Federal Government.” Most of us would have no trouble figuring out what “land” means: If you look at a map, it’s the part that isn’t blue.

Read the full opinion piece at the Washington Examiner

Trump administration considering National Marine Fisheries Service and Fish and Wildlife Services merger

June 29, 2018 — The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is looking to make changes to the U.S. government, and one of the recommendations it is considering would impact the seafood industry.

Earlier this month, the White House released a 128-page report, “Delivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century,” detailing steps it’s considering to streamline governmental functions. The report was written by the Office of Management and Budget after Trump issued an order to the agency in March 2017 to devise a plan to revise organizations within the executive branch.

“This plan will serve as a cornerstone for a productive, bipartisan dialogue around making the Federal Government work for the 21st century,” the administration said in a statement.

One of the recommendations in the report proposes to merge the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is part of the Commerce Department, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which falls under the Department of Interior. It’s not the first time the two agencies have been targeted for consolidation as the report mentions Congressional proposals and similar recommendations dating back to the administration of former president Jimmy Carter.

NMFS – sometimes referred to as NOAA Fisheries – and FWS hold similar responsibilities in protecting endangered species and marine mammals, and the report indicates the split can lead to confusion. Earlier this year, a committee in the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would eliminate redundancies in the Endangered Species Act and put FWS in charge of protecting fish that migrate between fresh and ocean waters.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

House Sends Darren Soto’s Billfish Bill to the President’s Desk

June 27, 2018 — On Monday, the U.S. House passed without opposition freshman U.S. Rep. Darren Soto’s, D-Fla., proposal limiting the sale of billfish caught by American vessels and giving the U.S. Commerce secretary more authority to  manage Atlantic highly migratory species.

Soto introduced his proposal back in December and it was backed by the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee last week.

“Under current law, billfish caught by U.S. vessels that land in Hawaii or Pacific Insular Areas (American Samoa, Baker Island, Guam, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Island, the Northern Mariana Islands, Palmyra Atoll, and Wake Island) may be sold and exported to non-U.S. markets or transported to other U.S. markets,” Soto’s office noted about the legislation. “This bill requires billfish caught by U.S. vessels that land in Hawaii or Pacific Insular Areas to be retained for sale in those areas. This strikes a balance between preserving traditional cultural fishing in these areas and the overall intent to prevent large scale commercial fishing of these billfish.

“Moreover, the bill clarifies that there is no language in the Shark Conservation Act (SCA) of 2010 that alters existing authority of the Secretary of Commerce to manage Atlantic highly migratory species under the Magnuson-Stevens Act,” Soto’s office added. “It also cleans up language in the SCA by removing an expired offset. The main goal of this fix is to ensure protection against shark finning.”

Read the full story at Sunshine State News

Trump’s plan for the oceans? More business, less protection

June 26, 2018 — Sea levels are rising, fish are chasing warmer waters north, $300 billion worth of goods are coming into or departing from American ports every year. It’s a dynamic time for coastal communities.

But with the stroke of a pen last week, President Donald Trump put the brakes on a comprehensive plan — years in the making — to balance the environmental, recreational and economic interests competing for the future of the oceans surrounding the U.S.

The Trump Administration is presenting a new executive order as a fundamental adjustment away from unnecessary levels of bureaucracy and toward an ocean policy that puts national security, job creation and corporate aspirations above all else.

The shift has been warmly received by fishermen and other business groups. Conservationists, however, are anxious that attitudes about ocean use will regress.

It’s quite a change of direction from the two terms under President Barack Obama.

Commercial fishermen have been strong critics of the previous policy and were happy to see it sink.

John Connelly, president of the seafood industry’s National Fisheries Institute, said in a statement that the Obama plan “excluded the perspective of the men and women who work the water.”

The National Ocean Policy created “additional levels of bureaucracy and uncertainty that threatened to reduce the overall productivity of our industry by forcing small business owners to divert limited resources away from their operations in order to deal with this unnecessary and ambiguous regulatory maze,” said Jim Donofrio, executive director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, which is based in Bass River.

Garden State Seafood Association executive director Greg DiDomenico told the Press that “it’s safe to say we are encouraged” by Trump’s attitude toward ocean policy.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

 

NOAA’s Research Just Shifted from Climate Change to “Empowering the Economy” and “National Security”

June 26, 2018 — One of the country’s major federal science agencies seems to have been forced to abandon climate change research as a key organizational focus, the New York Times revealed this week. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization is responsible for managing the National Weather Service and using its network of satellites to forecast the effects of climate change. Rather than concentrate on resiliency efforts, NOAA is now charged with prioritizing “a safe, secure and growing economy empowered through accurate, reliable and timely environmental information,” according to a slideshow presented by the agency’s acting director at a Department of Commerce meeting.

The Times had the details of the policy shift, the latest under President Trump’s watch:

In the presentation, which included descriptions of the past and present missions for the agency, the past mission listed three items, starting with “to understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans and coasts.” In contrast, for the present mission, the word “climate” was gone, and the first line was replaced with “to observe, understand and predict atmospheric and ocean conditions.”

The presentation also included a new emphasis: “To protect lives and property, empower the economy, and support homeland and national security.”

Read the full story at Mother Jones