Some U.S. seafood importers opposed restrictions on Russian fish, Alaska senator says

A 10-year loophole that allowed Russia to export seafood to the U.S. and undercut Alaska harvesters and processors has finally been closed, but the effort faced opposition within the U.S. from seafood importers who wanted access to cheap Russian fish.

Russia has flooded world markets with crab, cod, pollock and salmon to detriment of Alaskan harvesters and seafood companies, and coastal communities, Sen. Dan Sullivan said in a Dec. 31 briefing for reporters.

A U.S. Treasury Department order banning seafood harvested in Russia or by Russian vessels, even if the product is exported to a third country for processing and then reexported to the U.S. went into effect Dec. 23, Sullivan said.

China and Russia have the worst environmental and sustainability policies in the world with harvesting and processing while Alaska has the best, Sullivan said.

On top of that, China employs forced labor in its processing plants, usually from the repressed Uighur minority, the senator said.

Even worse, Chinese processors inject chemicals and water into their products to pump up the weight sometimes by 50 percent, which adds more profit when fish are sold the pound.

“I think this is just disgusting,” the senator said.

There’s also little doubt that the profits enjoyed by Russian companies, mostly owned by friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, wind up helping fund Putin’s war in Ukraine.

A ban on direct Russian imports has been in effect since Russia invaded Ukraine but Russian companies evaded the ban by shipping the fish to China from where it was re-shipped to the U.S. so as to show China as the country of origin.

“As of today, this will stop,” Sullivan said.

Russia itself banned imports of U.S. seafood in 2014 after the U.S. imposed sanctions following that nation’s invasion and seizure of Crimea, but ironically the U.S. continued to allow Russia to export seafood to the U.S.

“This was almost duty-free,” Sullivan said.

For years the Alaska senator and fisheries communities in the state have pressed the federal government through several administrations to impose restrictions on Russian imports to no avail even during the four years of the Trump presidency.

There were two efforts to pass a bill in Congress that would tighten restrictions but the effort failed both times when U.S. importers opposed it, the senator said.

“President Biden has now done the right thing,” he said.

Sullivan would identify U.S. companies opposing the legislation and administrative actions but he did say one company based in Massachusetts urged Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass, to block Sullivan’s initiative.

“They told us they had no other source of fish,” other than from Russia, Sullivan said. “I told them to talk to Alaskans. We have plenty of fish.”

Another domestic seafood importer buying Russian fish is owned by a private equity company. “All they care about is profits. They don’t care that the product was produced with slave labor,” the senator said.

The European Union has also banned imports of Russian seafood and that, combined with the new, tighter U.S. restrictions, will block access by Russia to the two largest seafood markets in the world.

Sullivan acknowledged that there will be efforts at cheating, such as by attempting to export from China to yet another country and then to the U.S., so the American authorities will have to be vigilant.

Also, the supply-chain documentation will be important, and the senator said there will be challenges there. But the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol have been able to monitor the supply chain in other industries and will be capable of this, Sullivan said.