Saving Seafood

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

China to slap tariffs on Alaska seafood, among other U.S. products

June 18, 2018 — The United States today released a list of Chinese goods worth $50 billion on which it will place 25 percent tariffs. Shortly afterward, China announced reciprocal tariffs on U.S. goods, including Alaska seafood.

Garett Evridge, an economist with the McDowell Group, who specializes in the seafood industry, explained that the tariff on seafood is likely to be far reaching.

“Our initial review of this is indicates that really all salmon species, pollock, ground fish, herring, really across the board for Alaska seafood products, in addition to lobster and other products used throughout the U.S., it looks like the announcement indicates that tariff would be 25 percent on product, including Alaska seafood products,” said Evridge.

Both U.S. and Chinese tariffs will reportedly take effect July 6. Evridge said it is too early to know what this will mean for the seafood market.

“There’s a whole other side of this with diplomacy and strategy on the side of China and the U.S. that we’re not really aware of. But in the event that this actually occurs, it will certainly be a challenge to the industry, and it will impact processors, communities, fishermen just because a 25 percent tariff means an increase in cost.”

One thing is clear, however. China plays a major role Alaska’s seafood industry, so the tariffs would affect a significant portion of the market.

Read the full story at KDLG

China threatens tariffs on US lobsters as business booms

June 18, 2018 — A set of retaliatory tariffs released by China on Friday includes a plan to tax American lobster exports, potentially jeopardizing one of the biggest markets for the premium seafood.

Chinese officials announced the planned lobster tariff along with hundreds of other tariffs amid the country’s escalating trade fight with the United States. China said it wants to place new duties on items such as farm products, autos and seafood starting on July 6.

The announcement could have major ramifications for the U.S. seafood industry and for the economy of the state of Maine, which is home to most of the country’s lobster fishery. China’s interest in U.S. lobster has grown exponentially in recent years, and selling to China has become a major focus of the lobster industry.

“Maine’s lobster industry is an irreplaceable piece of our state’s economy that supports thousands of jobs and entire coastal communities,” the state’s congressional delegation said in a statement. “Just two weeks ago, the Maine delegation heard directly from our state’s lobster industry about the economic hardship a trade war with China would cause them.”

The delegation — Republican Sen. Susan Collins, Independent Sen. Angus King; Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree and Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin — said they plan to outline their concerns to federal trade officials.

“Hopefully cooler heads can prevail and we can get a solution,” said Matt Jacobson, executive director of the Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative. “It’s a year round customer in China. This isn’t good news at all.”

Read the full story at the Associated Press

New England Fishermen Worry About Trade Dispute With China

June 18, 2018 — New England fishermen could be caught in the middle of the escalating trade dispute between the United States and China.

In response to Trump administration tariff threats, China is planning its own 25 percent tariff on more than 500 U.S. products, including seafood.

Latest numbers from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries put the value of seafood caught in Massachusetts in 2016 at $551 million.

But Chatham’s Doug Feeney says small boat fishermen like him are already hurting. He’s been traveling to China to try to expand his market.

Read the full story at WBUR

China hikes tariffs on US soybeans, electric cars, fish

June 18, 2018 — China fired back Saturday in a spiraling trade dispute with President Donald Trump by raising import duties on a $34 billion list of American goods including soybeans, electric cars and whiskey.

The government said it was responding in “equal scale” to Trump’s tariff hike on Chinese goods in a conflict over Beijing’s trade surplus and technology policy that companies worry could quickly escalate and chill global economic growth.

China “doesn’t want a trade war” but has to “fight back strongly,” said a Commerce Ministry statement. It said Beijing also was scrapping agreements to narrow its multibillion-dollar trade surplus with the United States by purchasing more American farm goods, natural gas and other products.

The United States and China have the world’s biggest trading relationship but official ties are increasingly strained over complaints Beijing’s industry development tactics violate its free-trade pledges and hurt American companies. Europe, Japan and other trading partners raise similar complaints, but Trump has been unusually direct about challenging Beijing and threatening to disrupt such a large volume of exports.

“In this trade war, it’s the U.S. who is playing the role of provocateur, while China plays defense,” said the Global Times, a newspaper published by the ruling Communist Party. “China is a powerful guardian and has enough ammunition to defend existing trade rules and fairness.”

Beijing will impose an additional 25 percent tariff starting July 6 on 545 products from the United States including soybeans, electric cars, orange juice, whiskey, lobsters, salmon and cigars, according to the Ministry of Finance.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Boston.com

NFI seeks to reach administration on seafood trade in 2018

January 2, 2018 — Pressing the importance of all trade on the Donald Trump administration, including imported seafood, will be one of the top priorities of the National Fisheries Institute (NFI) in 2018.

The US seafood industry’s biggest trade association, representing close to 300 companies, is still smarting from several of the moves made by the White House and its Cabinet in their first year, including its formal withdrawal from a trade deal with Pacific countries, a lack of progress on a trade deal with Europe and implementation of the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (Simp).

But NFI president John Connelly said trade will remain a top focal point for the group in the New Year.

“We just need to spend more time on the Hill and in the administration to help them appreciate that not all trade is negative for the US,” Connelly told Undercurrent News in an December interview at his office in McLean, Virginia. “Seafood is not like steel or autos or something else. We cannot now produce enough seafood in the US, whether it be from wild capture or aquaculture, to feed all Americans.”

The US exports 40% to 60% of the seafood it produces, depending on the value of the dollar and some other factors, and imports about 85% of the seafood it consumes. Seafood is responsible for 1,270,141 jobs in the U.S. and imports account for 525,291 of those, according to Department of Commerce data noted by the association.

“Gladys, down in Brownsville, Texas, is cutting imported tilapia right now, and that job is extraordinarily important to her family. Why is that job any less important than a job involving domestic codfish?” Connelly said.

High points and low points in 2017

But in looking back at 2017, Connelly can point to at least one major trade-related victory: The removal of the prospective border adjustment tax from the legislative tax overhaul passed by Congress and signed by the president before leaving on its winter break. The provision, which was supported by several Republican leaders, would have forced some seafood dealers to raise their prices 30% to 40%, said Connelly, quoting a Wall Street Journal article.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

China is Fishing Ever Farther From Home, Adding to Stress on Fish Stocks

January 1, 2018 — China’s fishing fleet, which reaches as far as Latin America, West Africa, and even Antarctica, is adding to a worldwide strain on fish stocks.

So it’s no surprise that Chinese fishermen have been involved in clashes with foreign fishermen and coast guards at great distances from their homeland.

In perhaps the most dramatic clash, which occurred in March 2016, Argentina’s coast guard sank a Chinese trawler that was fishing within its territorial waters more than 11,000 miles from its home base on the China coast. The trawler had tried to ram the Argentine vessel.

Argentine Navy submarines have been assigned to “chase down illegal fishing vessels in the frigid waters off southern Argentina,” according to a Wall Street Journal report from that country published early this month.

Reuters news agency, meanwhile, reported at the end of August that Ecuador had jailed 20 Chinese fishermen for up to four years for illegally fishing off the Galapagos Islands, where they were caught with some 6,600 sharks.

Their vessel contained some 300 tons of near-extinct or endangered species, including hammerhead sharks.

Incidents have also occurred near South Korea and in disputed areas in the South China Sea, where Chinese Coast Guard ships have clashed with Vietnamese fishermen.

Pressures in the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea leading to incidents like this are driving China to fish elsewhere in the world.

Chinese fishermen target West Africa

In April 2017, The New York Times reported from Senegal that Chinese fishermen were increasingly heading to West Africa.

The fishermen are enabled by corrupt local governments and their weak enforcement of fishing limits.

Citing experts, The Times states that West Africa now provides “the vast majority” of fish caught by China’s distant-water fishing fleet.

Fishing off the coast of Senegal, “most of the Chinese ships are so large that they scoop up as many fish in one week as Senegalese boats catch in a year,” The Times report said.

Most of the fish are sent abroad, with some of it ending up as fishmeal fodder for chickens and pigs in Europe and the United States.

For Senegalese citizens, many of whom depend on fish as a source of protein, diminishing fish catches mean higher food prices.

In nearby Sierra Leone, meanwhile, a similar scenario is playing out.

The Economist Magazine reported on Dec. 7 from Sierra Leone that “nearly half of the population” of 7.4 million people in the small west African nation “does not have enough to eat.”

“But the country’s once plentiful shoals, combined with its weak government, have lured a flotilla of unscrupulous foreign trawlers to its waters.”

Most of the trawlers fly Chinese flags, but dozens also come from South Korea, Italy, Guinea, and Russia.

According to Tabitha Mallory, an expert on these issues, by 2015 more than 160 Chinese fishing enterprises had agreements to operate off the shores of some 40 countries, the high seas, and Antarctica. But other Chinese vessels may be operating in more countries illegally.

But in contrast with West Africa, where Chinese fishermen have done great harm to local economies, Antarctica stands out as a new frontier where the fishermen appear to have begun playing by internationally agreed upon rules.

China has joined a commission for the conservation of marine life in Antarctica and has pledged its support for a marine protected area on the cold continent.

However, poor regulation of China’s distant-water fishing (DWF) fleet elsewhere has added to a strain on global fish stocks, according to experts and nongovernmental organizations monitoring the issue.

Greenpeace, a nongovernmental organization which campaigns to change attitudes toward the environment, has found that from 2014-2016, China’s distant water fishing (DWF) fleet — vessels operating outside Chinese territorial waters — increased by 400 to nearly 2,900.

This followed a similar period of expansion between 2012 and 2014, when the fleet grew by 15 percent each year on average.

By comparison, the United States had just 225 large-size DWF vessels, according to 2015 data.

Read the full commentary at Radio Free Asia

 

Pacific Bluefin Tuna Catch Quotas to be Based on Stock Recovery

December 12, 2017 — TOKYO, SEAFOOD NEWS — An international panel has decided to introduce a new framework to change catch quotas for Pacific bluefin tuna according to the extent of stock recovery.

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission made the decision at its annual meeting in Manila, which ended early Friday.

The WCPFC, which discusses resources management for tuna and bonito in the Western and Central Pacific, has 26 member economies, including Japan, the United States and China.

The panel has set a goal of increasing adult Pacific bluefin tuna stocks from some 17,000 tons in 2014 to around 41,000 tons by 2024.

In September, the WCPFC’s Northern Committee agreed to increase catch quotas once the probability of achieving the goal reaches 75 pct or more and to reduce the quotas if the figure falls below 60 pct.

With the WCPFC approving the introduction of the new rules, the framework to change catch quotas according to the speed of stock recovery is expected to be put in place in 2019 at the earliest.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

 

Russia, U.S. and Other Nations Restrict Fishing in Thawing Arctic

December 1, 2017 — MOSCOW — Relations between Russia and the United States are in a deep freeze, but they share a looming common problem north of their Arctic coastlines — the prospect that commercial trawling fleets might overfish the thawing Arctic Ocean.

Out on the sea, the polar ice cap has been melting so quickly as global temperatures rise that once improbable ideas for commercial activities, including fishing near the North Pole, are becoming realistic.

While Russia, the United States and three other countries with Arctic coastline control the exclusive economic zones near their shores, overfishing in the international waters at the central Arctic Ocean could collapse fish stocks.

Whatever their disagreements elsewhere, the countries have a shared interest in protecting the high Arctic from such unregulated fishing, which could affect coastal stocks as well, conservationists say.

Read the full story at the New York Times

US, Japan, Spain focus of new Walton Family Foundation markets strategy

June 6, 2017 — The Walton Family Foundation will focus its efforts to improve seafood sustainability on the demand side of the global market, concentrating its efforts on the United States, Japan and Spain, the organization announced at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle, Washington on 4 June.

The U.S., Japan and Spain together import more than two-thirds of the world’s globally traded seafood products, and are all major destinations for seafood from the five countries the foundation has targeted in its supply-side sustainability efforts.

“This strategy is about following the flow of fish and dollars from Indonesia, the United States, Mexico, Chile and Peru to those markets where those fish are bought and sold,” said Teresa Ish, the foundation’s Ocean Initiative program officer.

The foundation, created by Walmart founders Sam and Helen Walton, announced in September 2016 that it would commit USD 250 million (EUR 224 million) to marine conservation efforts in those five countries. The focus of the WFF efforts will be to “ensure that the important policies of these major seafood markets helps level the playing field for lagging actors across the industry who haven’t seen that the future of fishing needs to be sustainable, as well as the major producing countries who are putting short-term resource use ahead of the long-term sustainability of their industry,” Ish said.

In 2016, the United States imported around USD 2.2 billion (EUR 2 billion) in seafood products from Chile, Indonesia, Mexico and Peru, while Japan imported USD 1.1 billion (EUR 976 million) and Spain brought in USD 290 million (EUR 258 million) in seafood from those four countries combined.

“Our markets approach aims to encourage industry to make investments – of money, time, staffing and brainpower – that raise incomes and improve the quality of life for individual fishermen and fishing communities in these countries,” the foundation said in its report, distributed at SeaWeb.

Read the full story at Seafood Source