Saving Seafood

What You Need To Know: USMCA Enters Into Force TODAY, Wednesday, July 1

July 1, 2020 — The following was released by The White House:

TODAY, Wednesday, July 1, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) enters into force.The USMCA delivers on President Trump’s promise to replace the outdated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with a 21st century trade deal that marks the beginning of a historic new chapter for North American trade by supporting more balanced, reciprocal trade, leading to freer markets, fairer trade, and robust economic growth in North America. The Agreement contains significant improvements and modernized approaches to rules of origin, agricultural market access, intellectual property, digital trade, financial services, labor, and numerous other sectors. These enhancements will deliver more jobs, provide stronger labor protections, and expand market access, creating new opportunities for American workers, farmers, and ranchers. On June 29, 2020, President Trump signed a Proclamation to take certain actions under USMCA Implementation Act. You can find the full proclamation here. You can also find additional details on the U.S. Customs & Border Protection work to implement USMCA here.

With today’s entry into force, the USMCA will help address longstanding trade imbalances. Key provisions include:

  • More North American Auto Content: Under USMCA’s rules vehicles must be built with at least 75 percent of parts made in North America in order to qualify for zero tariffs, up from 62.5 percent under NAFTA. Also, 40 to 45 percent of an auto will have to be made by workers earning at least $16 an hour. Recent USTR analysis estimates that these rules will incentivize billions in new U.S. automotive investment and in new purchases of U.S.-made auto parts, and support tens of thousands of additional jobs in the U.S. automotive sector. Read the analysis here.
  • Increased Agricultural Market Access: The USMCA provides the U.S. with greater access to Canada’s dairy, poultry, and egg markets. Combined with other agricultural provisions in the agreement, the independent International Trade Commission estimates that, as a result of USMCA, U.S. agricultural exports to Canada and the rest of the world would increase by $2.2 billion.
  • Small and Medium Sized Businesses: The USMCA contains the first chapter of any trade agreement dedicated to Small and Medium Enterprises. The chapter will enforce new intellectual property provisions, bolster innovation, and support small businesses engaging in digital trade. Additionally, USMCA removes burdensome regulations, reduces duplicative red tape, and lowers costs that will help the 30 million U.S. small businesses that employ half the private-sector workforce and create two-thirds of all new jobs, to better compete globally.
  • Enhanced Labor and Environmental Rights: The USMCA makes a number of significant upgrades to NAFTA’s environmental and labor provisions, incorporates them into the core of the agreement, and makes them fully enforceable, which will help level the playing field for U.S. workers and businesses.
  • Addresses Non-Market Practice and Unfair Subsidies: The agreement includes countless rules that directly address the pernicious and growing challenge of unfair subsidies and non-market practices that have the potential to disadvantage U.S. workers and businesses. These include new and enforceable provisions covering state-owned enterprises, currency manipulation, anticorruption, and combatting duty evasion.
  • Increased Intellectual Property Protections: USMCA dramatically enhances intellectual property protections. It contains a modernized, high-standard IP chapter that provides strong and effective protection and enforcement of IP rights critical to driving innovation, creating economic growth, and supporting American jobs.
  • Strongest Provisions on Digital Trade: The USMCA includes a first-of-its-kind chapter on digital trade that – among other things – ensures data can be transferred across borders and cracks down on data localization measures used to restrict where data can be stored and processed.

More on USMCA: Canada and Mexico are our first and third largest exports markets for United States food and agricultural products, making up 28 percent of total food and agricultural exports in 2017.  These exports support more than 325,000 American jobs. In November 2018, President Trump signed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) delivering on his promise to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and protect American farmers, ranchers, businesses, and workers. The USMCA is a 21st century, high-standard agreement that modernizes the 25-year-old NAFTA and supports mutually beneficial trade leading to freer markets, fairer trade, and robust economic growth in North America. can find the Agreement’s Text here, pertinent Fact Sheets here, and Support from External Stakeholders here and here.

Lawsuit demands Trump administration to impose vaquita-related sanctions against Mexico

June 11, 2020 — The Center for Biological Diversity and the Animal Welfare Institute have sued the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump in an effort to force it to implement sanctions against Mexico for its failures to protect the highly endangered vaquita porpoise.

The CBD and AWI said the sanctions are “long overdue,” accusing the U.S. Department of the Interior of failing to respond to a 2014 petition they filed under the Administrative Procedure Act requesting the United States “certify” Mexico under the U.S. Pelly Amendment for Mexico’s “ongoing failure to halt illegal fishing of and international trade in endangered totoaba fish.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

With US ban on Mexican seafood imports in place, vaquita court case dismissed

April 22, 2020 — A lawsuit against the U.S. government aiming to require it to enforce the Marine Mammal Protect Act in regard to the critically endangered vaquita porpoise has been dismissed after the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service expanded a ban on imports of seafood products caught in the vaquita’s habitat.

U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Gary S. Katzmann dismissed the suit at the request of the plaintiffs, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Animal Welfare Institute, on 22 March.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Coast Guard breaks up Mexican poachers’ red snapper incursion off Texas

April 10, 2020 — Thirteen Mexican fishermen were detected poaching red snapper far north of the U.S. maritime boundary off south Texas Monday when the Coast Guard moved in to break up their longlining operations, Coast Guard officials said.

Three lanchas – small, slim-hulled outboard boats of 20 to 30 feet that can run at 30 knots – were corralled about 50 miles inside the boundary and detained by crews on a Coast Guard cutter, small boat and helicopters.

The haul brought in 12 miles of longline gear, other fishing equipment illegal under U.S. law, and 2,020 pounds of poached red snapper.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

No changes to US H-2B plans, Canada puts restrictions on foreign national travel

March 24, 2020 — According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, there are no changes at this time to the current plan to add 35,000 visas to the country’s H-2B temporary worker program.

That announcement initially came prior to the coronavirus pandemic that’s shut down several sectors of the U.S. economy. Over the weekend, the U.S. enacted bilateral agreements with Canada and Mexico to shut down the borders for non-essential travel, which includes tourism and recreational travel, in an attempt to control the spread of COVID-19. After that move, it was initially in doubt as to whether the H-2B program expansion would continue as planned.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Chesapeake crab industry remains crippled by visa shortage, coronavirus

March 20, 2020 — Responding to employers’ calls, including those of crab meat processing companies in Virginia and Maryland, the federal government announced March 5 that it would release an additional 35,000 temporary visas for foreign workers.

That still may not be enough to quench the Chesapeake Bay seafood houses’ demand for temporary workers, according to the trade group that represents the industry. And they may still arrive too late to help much or perhaps get stuck on the other side of the border, as the United States today closed its Mexican border for unessential travel because of coronavirus concerns.

Several seafood company owners and watermen had implored the Trump administration to issue 64,000 more visas, the cap set by Congress.

Jack Brooks, co-owner of J.M. Clayton Seafood Co. in Cambridge, MD, and president of the Chesapeake Bay Seafood Industries Association, said he expects a worker shortfall, despite the government’s action.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

Seafood Plants Scrambling After Border Restrictions Block Many Foreign Workers

March 19, 2020 — Canada’s decision to close the border to some foreign visitors threatens to upend the Atlantic lobster and snow crab processing industry.

The processing plants rely on thousands of mostly Mexican temporary foreign workers who are no longer allowed into the country. The restriction applies to travellers who are not Canadian citizens, permanent residents or Americans.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Suspension of visa processing for Mexican seasonal workers hits U.S. farms, fisheries

March 18, 2020 — American farmers are bracing for a shortage of seasonal workers following the State Department’s suspension of routine immigrant and nonimmigrant visa processing in Mexico, including for temporary migrant laborers, beginning Wednesday.

The delay in visa processing for farmworkers comes just as harvest season begins in Florida. Companies responsible for feeding the country are already expecting fewer available workers to manufacture, deliver and unpack groceries as the coronavirus pandemic intensifies.

The seafood industry, including fisheries and crab-picking in Maryland, whose hiring season starts in April, will also be affected by the U.S. government’s decision.

“One of the most important things we need to do is to make sure that our supply chains for food stay in place, and guest workers are a big part of what drives that engine,” said Sarah Frey, founder and chief executive of Frey Farms, which operates in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and West Virginia. “We have to figure out ways to keep going. Right now, feeding people is an essential service.”

Read the full story at The Washington Post

U.S. bans more Mexico seafood imports to protect vaquita porpoises

March 11, 2020 — Almost all Mexican shrimp and fish caught from the northern Gulf of California was barred from U.S. trade March 4, as NMFS invoked the Marine Mammal Protection Act in a bid to stop use of gillnets blamed for entangling endangered vaquita porpoises.

The porpoises’ population had already plunged from an estimated 560 animals in the 1990s to 30 surviving by 2017, when the Mexican government officials banned most gillnets in the area.

But the rule was poorly enforced, and the NMFS import ban puts more pressure on the government to carry out blanket prohibition and enforcement that environmental groups and marine scientists say are the only chance for saving the porpoises.

“Mexico has no choice but to eliminate the destructive fishing taking place in the northern Gulf of California that is driving the vaquita to extinction,” said Zak Smith, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It’s the only hope the vaquita has for survival, and it is required if Mexico wants to resume exporting these products to the United States.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

US to enforce ban on shrimp, other fish caught in Mexico’s Gulf of California

March 6, 2020 — US importers of Mexican shrimp and other seafood should soon be prepared to present documentation certifying that any of the products they are bringing over the border do not match a list of roughly five species caught in the upper Gulf of California using multiple gear types.

The US’ National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) announced Wednesday that it will ban the import of virtually all Mexican shrimp and other fish caught in that region of the country over concerns about the endangered vaquita porpoise. An effective date has not yet been set, but it is expected to be within a month and require importers to maintain a “certification of admissibility” that is signed by a Mexican government official establishing that the products being shipped are not from the upper Gulf of California’s:

  • shrimp trawl fishery, for both small and large vessels;
  • shrimp suripera fishery;
  • sierra purse seine fishery;
  • sierra hook and line fishery;
  • chano trawl fishery, for small vessels;
  • curvina purse seine fishery; or
  • sardine/curvina purse seine fishery, for both small and large vessels.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News