The economic salvos continue to fly from both sides of the border as the inexplicable trade war between Canada and the United States trundles on.
As President Donald Trump continues to pour salt into the wounds he has created and Prime Minister Mark Carney pivots with courting international investors and the European Union, the commercial fishery remains, for the most part, unscathed for now.
There were immediate fears the seafood industry might be drawn in to the fray in late August when U.S. seafood was initially included as part of Canada’s $27.6-billion retaliatory tariff package. But thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and almost as soon as they were announced, the Canadian federal government removed fish and seafood products from its list of United States goods facing counter-tariffs.
Throughout this ongoing economic kerfuffle, the seafood industry has been flying under the radar and a recent fisheries policy move by the U.S. has not garnered much attention.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently announced a list of priorities to promote what it called “science-based American seafood dominance.”
In September, NOAA Fisheries announced a series of agency/scientific-level reforms intended to reduce regulatory burdens, increase domestic seafood production, improve fishing opportunities and strengthen the economic position of American fishermen. The announcement followed the Trump administration’s earlier Executive Order on Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness.
NOAA said its new priorities were informed by extensive public input. The agency reported receiving input from 787 individuals and organizations, including fishermen, industry representatives, regional fishery management councils and members of the public. NOAA added that the resulting priorities are intended to improve regulatory efficiency while maintaining conservation responsibilities and supporting sustainable fishing opportunities.
NOAA’s priorities appear to be, for the most part, regional in nature, illustrating what could be a practical direction of the initiative.
In New England, for example, NOAA plans to address industry-funded monitoring burdens, modernize fleet capacity and reconsider certain static area closures. In the Mid-Atlantic, priorities include modernizing fleet capacity and improving quota distribution. Other regions have priorities involving fishing access, marine protected areas, shrimp, trawl observers and international quotas.
The regional approaches make more sense than imposing one national solution on every fishery. American fisheries, like the ones here in Canada, operate under very different ecological and economic conditions. A policy appropriate for Alaska may be inappropriate for the Gulf of Mexico or New England. Giving regional organizations meaningful responsibility, while requiring decisions to remain consistent with scientific evidence and federal law, allows management to reflect local circumstances.
Other priorities include:
- Review internal Fishery Finance Program authorities to deploy loan refinancing, deferred payments, and principal reductions for distressed sectors.
- Explore modernizing support mechanisms to address supply chain risks and capitalize the upgrading of aging domestic fleets and obsolete gear.
- Conduct a comprehensive review of the Magnuson-Stevens Act disaster determination and funding process and explore pathways to expand access to existing government market and disaster support mechanisms.
- Review the Seafood Import Monitoring Program requirements to optimize illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing reduction goals through technological modernization and risk-based screening, while hosting industry sessions to identify and mitigate operational and administrative burdens.
- Eliminate any mandated Seafood Import Monitoring Program data fields that lack active operational use cases for illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing detection or targeted audits.
- Deploy AI and automated screening algorithms within the Global Seafood Data System to flag anomalies and upgrade the International Fisheries Trade Permit system to prioritize user experience, expedite approvals and minimize industry downtime.
While Trump wants to make the U.S. seafood “dominant,” like he wants to do with pretty much everything, he might be inadvertently, through NOAA, creating a framework that makes the United States a leader in producing seafood efficiently, while maintaining healthy oceans and viable fishing communities.
Could the President’s misguided purview actually lead to initiatives that not merely make efforts to catch more fish, but improve the long-term future of the American seafood industry? Who would have thought?
When the dust settles on the Canadian federal government’s mega-project push, perhaps it should task the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to take a similar approach to our commercial fishing industry? The last thing anyone in Ottawa wants to admit to right now is that we are poaching an idea from the U.S., but they might be onto something here.
There has traditionally been a love-hate relationship between the harvesting sector and DFO Science branches. But at this given time in history, it might be a good exercise for the Canadian seafood industry to concentrate on looking at our own domestic fisheries policy, as well as plying our seafood wares around the globe.
