The Southern Shrimp Alliance welcomes the Trump Administration’s announcement of the America First Seafood Strategy. The Friday announcement was accompanied by a 33-page report and website, seafood.gov, focused on the revitalization of the U.S. seafood industry that clearly identified the challenge confronting the federal government:
“Rich Waters.
Rising Imports.
The United States has some of the richest fishery resources in the world and the hardest working commercial fishermen on Earth. Yet America imports an overwhelming majority of its seafood supply while domestic seafood businesses and fishing communities struggle to survive. President Trump is fixing this, and putting America’s fisheries and American consumers first.”
“President Trump has prioritized getting fishermen back to work to supply Americans with healthy, sustainable, domestically-sourced seafood. The U.S. shrimp industry is thrilled to see a detailed America First Seafood Strategy and looks forward to assisting federal agencies in the implementation of its objectives,” said Blake Price, Executive Director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance. “At the same time, American shrimpers ask that the Administration take meaningful action to combat the unfair trade practices that have allowed foreign seafood to dominate our market and provide immediate relief from high diesel costs that have forced our boats to tie up.”
The Need for a Better Strategy
In 2021, American commercial fishermen landed 3.9 million metric tons of seafood with a landed value of $6.5 billion. Although this was not the high watermark for American wild-caught seafood production, as U.S. fishermen landed more than 4.2 million metric tons annually every year between 2011 and 2019, 2021 established a new record for the value commercial fishermen added to the U.S. economy.
However, since the apex of 2021, the U.S. wild-caught seafood industry has been in decline. From 2022 through 2024, the total volume of seafood commercially landed in the United States has averaged less than 3.7 million metric tons a year, with just 3.5 million metric tons landed in 2024. In the last full year for which NOAA Fisheries has reported commercial seafood landing data (2024), the total value of U.S. fishermen’s catch was just $4.9 billion, down 25 percent from 2021.
The rapid deterioration of the American seafood industry has been acutely felt by shrimpers in the Gulf of America and the South Atlantic. In 2021, these fishermen caught 103,242 metric tons of shrimp with a landed value of $522.1 million. Three years later, in 2024, the volume landed by these shrimpers fell to 72,451 metric tons with a value of $258.8 million – declines of 30 percent and 50 percent, respectively.
What Does the America First Seafood Strategy Do and What Doesn’t It Do?
The Administration’s announcement last week articulates a plan through which federal agencies will direct existing resources to support American seafood producers, both in the wild-caught and aquaculture industries.
Regulatory Reform and Rebuilding Seafood Infrastructure
The America First Seafood Strategy explains that “America cannot become a world leader in seafood production while depending on aging infrastructure, foreign processing capacity, and supply chains controlled by overseas competitors.” The America First Seafood Strategy “will reverse the decline” in U.S. seafood infrastructure “by rebuilding the domestic industrial capacity necessary to harvest, land, process, store, transport, and sell American seafood.” Similarly, the America First Seafood Strategy reinforces President Trump’s Seafood Competitiveness Executive Order 14276 by continuing the commitment to the identification of regulations that unnecessarily burden or stifle opportunities to increase American seafood production.
Importantly, for American shrimpers, this means that NOAA Fisheries “in consultation with other agencies, will identify reforms that allow fishermen to modernize vessels while maintaining appropriate safeguards.” The America First Seafood Strategy requires that federal agencies review regulations “that unintentionally discourage fishermen from replacing or substantially improving older vessels” and instructs these agencies to “issue new proposed regulations within 9 months of the issuance of this strategy.” Similarly, the Strategy calls upon federal agencies to look into funding mechanisms, as well as obstacles to private capital, for the recapitalization of the American fishing fleet.
The America First Seafood Strategy describes the goal of this portion of the Strategy to be simple: “American seafood should be harvested in America, landed in America, processed in America, and sold from an American-controlled supply chain whenever economically practical.” This means rebuilding American seafood processing capacity that has been lost to offshoring and removing bureaucratic red tape that has inhibited working waterfront maintenance and development.
In evaluating whether the objectives of this part of the Strategy are met, the America First Seafood Strategy stresses that achievements “should not be measured by the amount of federal money spent” but through an evaluation of whether there is (1) “[m]ore seafood produced and processed in America;” (2) “[m]ore private capital invested in American seafood businesses;” (3) [m]ore modern and competitive American fishing vessels;” (4) “[m]ore viable working waterfronts;” (5) “[m]ore American jobs and value-added production;” (6) “[l]ower dependence on foreign processor and foreign supply chains; (7) “[l]ower regulatory costs for American businesses;” and (8) “[a] stronger domestic seafood industrial base capable of competing with the world.”
Fair Trade & Import Compliance/Enforcement
The America First Seafood Strategy notes that “[u]nder President Trump, the United States will no longer allow foreign competitors to destroy U.S. seafood industries through artificially low pricing, limited market access, and distortive trade practices.” The Strategy calls upon the office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), “in collaboration with other U.S. departments and agencies,” to “address unfair and non-reciprocal policies and practices . . .”
The America First Seafood Strategy does not discuss any potential Section 301 investigation of seafood trade, as referenced in a February statement from the USTR, Ambassador Jamieson Greer, and as requested by a wide variety of U.S. seafood producers and members of Congress in May. Nor does the Strategy mention improved enforcement of food safety regulations that might remove foreign seafood contaminated with banned antibiotics and other harmful substances from the U.S. market.
Instead, the Strategy notes that the USTR is “continuing to address concerns with India’s substantial fisheries subsidy programs that enable Indian producers to export seafood to the United States at lower-than-market prices and also with Vietnam’s IUU fishing practices that directly impact U.S. fishermen and supply chains.” The Strategy also explains that federal agencies will work to “[i]mprove compliance with, and enforcement of, NOAA’s Seafood Import Monitoring Program, Marine Mammal Protection Act seafood import program, and other programs, as appropriate” with the utilization of tools that make it “possible to better target and detect seafood imports that violate U.S. regulations that level the playing field for domestic producers.”
Otherwise, the America First Seafood Strategy largely focuses on export opportunities for American seafood and asks the USTR to “continue to use negotiations and enforcement tools to promote fair and reciprocal trade in seafood, open new markets for U.S. exports, and secure commitments from trading partners to address persistent practices that distort seafood trade and disadvantage U.S. fishermen.” The Strategy instructs the USTR and the U.S. Department of Commerce “in consultation with FDA, State, and USDA” to “identify a short list of nations with either (1) large seafood trade imbalances or (2) high tariff and non-tariff barriers on” American seafood and to “report annually on actions undertaken to improve seafood exports to these nations.” No similar annual report is mentioned regarding improved enforcement of the regulation of imported seafood.
Promoting Domestic Seafood
The America First Seafood Strategy describes the need for federal agencies to “develop and disseminate a comprehensive, evidence-based public health education initiative on the health benefits of American seafood.” The effort will be part of a nationwide “Eat American Seafood Campaign” that “will actively encourage seafood dealers, processors, restaurants, grocery retailers, distributors, chefs, and institutional purchasers to voluntarily identify and promote American seafood.” The Strategy also observes that “[t]he federal government will use its purchasing power to strengthen America’s seafood processing capacity and create new domestic markets for seafood harvested and processed in the United States.” Explaining that “[t]he federal government is one of the largest food purchasers in the country,” the America First Seafood Strategy notes that “[e]xisting federal purchasing power should be used more strategically to support American producers.”
The Strategy also instructs the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and NOAA Fisheries to “establish a joint interagency task force to target, inspect, and identify other actions to address foreign seafood imports, under existing authorities, entering the country through mislabeling, species substitution, or country-of-origin fraud.” Although the Strategy observes that “American consumers deserve to know when they are buying seafood caught and provided by American fishermen and businesses operating under the highest environmental and labor standards in the world,” it does not make any reference to the Federal Trade Commission’s efforts to address false marketing of foreign seafood in restaurants as wild-caught, American product.
Instead, the America First Seafood Strategy announced the creation of a “voluntary ‘U.S. Caught Seafood’ designation for seafood caught by American commercial fishermen on U.S. flagged vessels operating under U.S. fisheries management.” The Strategy further explains that this voluntary “U.S. Caught Seafood” designation “is complementary to the existing country of origin labeling requirements for fish and shellfish.”
Under the Country-of-Origin-Labeling (COOL) laws currently administered by the USDA, seafood that is landed in U.S. waters or by U.S.-flagged vessels can be labeled as a product of the United States. However, seafood landed in the United States or by a U.S.-flagged vessel that is processed in another country does not qualify and cannot be described as a product of the United States. Seafood supply chains that have offshored seafood processing for domestic product away from the United States, particularly to China, have repeatedly advocated for labels that would allow their merchandise to be described as a product of the United States even though the seafood was processed overseas.
The Southern Shrimp Alliance will seek to ensure that the FDA’s new voluntary “U.S. Caught Seafood” designation would not permit Chinese- (and other foreign-) processed seafood to be marketed with this label in the United States. The U.S. shrimp industry has consistently opposed efforts to facilitate the offshoring of U.S. seafood processing. For American shrimpers, if the new “U.S. Caught Seafood” designation allowed for seafood landed in the United States but processed outside of the country to be marketed with this voluntary label, then shrimp landed by American shrimpers but processed in Mexican (or Vietnamese or Indian or Chinese) shrimp processing plants would qualify for the new FDA designation. At a minimum, any “U.S. Caught Seafood” designation should be implemented in a manner that continues to require that the country of processing be disclosed on the product’s packaging.
Finally, the Strategy instructs the FDA to “review the FDA seafood list and applicable naming policies to identify outdated or unnecessary restrictive common or market names that inhibit the sale of underutilized domestic species.”
“President Trump has brought more attention to the problems facing U.S. fishermen than any other in my lifetime,” said Brent Fulcher, a North Carolina Board Member of the Southern Shrimp Alliance and Chair of the North Carolina Fishermen’s Association. “This plan coordinates multiple federal agencies to support U.S. seafood producers in fixing complex, long-term problems. It is a powerful step needed to rebuild America’s ability to produce seafood for generations to come, and I look forward to seeing the results.”
Read the America First Seafood Strategy: Restoring American Seafood Dominance, Food Security, and Coastal Prosperity here: https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/america-first-seafood-strategy.pdf