Congressman Clay Higgins (R-LA) sent a letter to President Trump advocating for tariffs and stronger trade enforcement on seafood imports from China, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Deborah Long with the Southern Shrimp Alliance says the U-S shrimp industry is facing a financial crisis.
“According to NOAA fisheries data, the value of the fisherman’s catch has fallen about half from 2021 to 2023, and it remains close to that level last year.”
These unfair practices lower prices, disrupt market conditions and threaten American seafood producers’ livelihoods. Higgins urged the administration to impose antidumping and countervailing duties, and enforce stricter testing protocols. Long says Higgins is leading the call for stricter standards.
“And that there should be up to a 100% tariff, and that we should be destroying shipments that fail to meet our health standards.”
Long says that compared to the E-U where all shipments are tested before being shipped and 50-percent are tested again when delivered, the U-S only tests 0.1-percent of seafood.
“It is important that we have our standards as high as the other major markets for shrimp because when our standards are so low we become the dumping ground for contaminated shrimp.”
Long also provided this statement.
The value of the Louisiana shrimp industry’s catch fell from $130.6 million in 2021 to $60.2 million in 2023. Across the entire U.S. warmwater shrimp industry, the total value of shrimpers’ catch collapsed from $521.8 million in 2021 to $268.7 million.
NOAA Fisheries has not yet released final 2024 numbers, but they should be very similar to the 2023 amounts – meaning there were two lost seasons for the shrimp industry over the last two years. The shrimp industry cannot continue to operate under the strain of unequal standards and market manipulation absent aggressive actions like those advocated by Representative Higgins.
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