Lost in the headlines about the hits to seafood sales from the Trump administration’s trade war with China is another international barrier that’s been going on far longer.
In August 2014, Russia placed an embargo on all U.S. food products to retaliate for sanctions the U.S and other Western countries imposed over the invasion of Ukraine. The ban included Alaska seafood, which at the time accounted for more than $61 million in annual sales to Russia, primarily pink salmon roe.
But here’s the bigger hurt: For the nearly six years that the embargo has been in place, no corresponding limits have ever been imposed on Russian seafood coming into the U.S.
At first, Alaska seafood companies and the state’s congressional delegation made some tit for tat noise about imposing a ban on Russian seafood. But in fact, the value of Russian imports has grown nearly 70% since 2014 and it all comes into the U.S. almost entirely duty-free.
A four-page white paper from the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute outlines the trade imbalance further.
For example, the U.S. imported $551 million of seafood from Russia in 2018, plus $50 million of pollock from China that was caught in Russia. U.S. crab constituted 84% of the value of Russian imports just in that one year.
Through December 2019, the numbers increased again federal trade data show that more than 80.2 million pounds of Russian seafood entered the U.S. valued at over $698 million. That included nearly 16 million pounds of red king crab valued at $293 million and 4.6 million pounds of frozen sockeye salmon worth over $16.7 million.
Alaska and Russia harvest many of the same fish and crab species, and many Russian seafood products compete in the U.S. at much lower prices.
The trade report reveals how ASMI worked aggressively to build markets in Russia starting in 2006, and steady growth boosted Alaska pink salmon prices from 2010 through 2013, which benefited fishermen and coastal communities.
The trade imbalance will only get worse, the ASMI report said, as Russia aims to nearly double the value of its global seafood exports by 2024 to over $8 billion.
Huge investments are underway to increase and modernize capacity by building more than 20 new processing plants and 90 new fishing vessels by the year 2030. The plan also includes the launch of a new marketing and supply chain strategy called The Russian Fish.
Total investments by Russia to its fishery sector between 2018 and 2025 are estimated at nearly $7 billion.
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