The coronavirus outbreak has severely disrupted seafood exports from fisheries on the U.S. West Coast to China.
Washington state exports some USD 150 million (EUR 138.87 million) worth of seafood to China every year, according to the Washington Council on International Trade. American companies also send seafood to China for processing because labor is significantly cheaper.
“Anytime you go and buy [a fish] filet from Alaska, there’s a good chance that filet was de-boned and filleted in China and then sent back to the U.S.,” economist Spencer Cohen Said.
However, Washington Council on International Trade President Lori Otto Punke told KOMO News that the state’s seafood business is “an industry that has really been suffering as a result of the trade war [and] is now taking yet another hit on an unexpected and unknown outcome as it relates to coronavirus outbreak.”
In California, lobster exports to China had been hit by a 42 percent tariff, caused by the Trump administration’s trade war with Beijing. And when China imposed a closure of its seafood markets in January as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, lobster prices were nearly halved from USD 15.00 (EUR 13.89) to USD 8.00 (EUR 7.41).
The Santa Barbara lobster season typically brings in USD 4 million (EUR 3.7 million) to USD 5 million (EUR 4.63 million) annually, but stakeholders aren’t sure what to expect this year with the loss of the Chinese market, according to the Santa Barbara Independent.
According to fisherman Jeff Olsen, who harvests geoduck in Alaska, a stoppage of flights by U.S. carriers has severely cut demand for the long-neck clams native to the Pacific Northwest.
“It’s killing us. We haven’t done geoducks for a month-and-a-half now. And now, they’re … not diving for maybe another month. They’re not able to ship them over there because all the flights are cancelled,” he said. “All the farms that are down here in Washington and all the geoduck companies that are down here, no one is shipping. They put a standstill on everything.”
Photo courtesy of Yuriy Golub/Shutterstock
