January 8, 2021 — The “Executive Order on Promoting American Seafood Competitiveness and Economic Growth,” issued by the Trump administration in May 2020, lays out a plan to expand the U.S. seafood industry, especially aquaculture, and enhance American seafood competitiveness in the global market.
The goals of the directive are focused largely on growth and expansion of the industry, which includes wild-caught fisheries and farm-raised products, as well as recreation, processing and other industries that rely on fishing.
“The seafood industry in general is worth about $200 billion and accounts for 2 million jobs in the United States,” said Halley E. Froehlich, a professor of fisheries and aquaculture at UC Santa Barbara, who with her colleagues finds that the executive order “ends up being a complicated and opaque ask,” given the complexity of the seafood industry and the headwinds it has been experiencing of late.
“We started having some deep conversations about policy implications and what they meant relative to some massive disruptions,” she said.