A four-page whitepaper released by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI) brings to light the uneven relationship between the Alaskan and Russian seafood industries.
In 2014, Russia placed an embargo on food products from the United States and other Western nations, banning all Alaskan seafood with the exception of canned salmon, which is not imported in significant amounts by Russia. The year before the embargo, Alaska exported some USD 61 million (EUR 56.4 million) worth of seafood to Russia, over three-fourths of which was salmon roe. The Japanese market is the most important buyer of Alaskan salmon roe, but after 2014, there hasn’t been a comparable market to fill Russia’s shoes, which had been the second-largest buyer.
Initially, Alaska attempted to respond in kind, with the state’s politicians proposing a federal ban on Russian seafood products. This effort lost steam, however, and the white paper reports that the value of Russian seafood imported by the United States has increased 69 percent since 2013. Because the United States – and the European Union – have not issued any sort of retaliatory tariffs on Russian goods since the embargo, Moscow is allowed to export its seafood products to the United States nearly duty free.
In 2018, the United States imported USD 551 million (EUR 509 million) of Russian seafood – as well as an additional USD 50 million (EUR 46.2 million) of Chinese pollock products, made primarily of Russian-caught pollock – compared to USD 326 million (EUR 301.3 million) in 2013.
Russia and Alaska catch many of the same species, including pollock, crab, salmon, and haddock, and the report notes that “these are important species for the Alaska industry and compete directly with Alaska seafood products in the U.S. market.” Russian crab made up 84 percent of the imports.
Russia aims to double the value of its seafood exports by 2024 to more than USD 8 billion (EUR 7.4 billion), and total investments in the fishery sector between 2018-2025 are expected to reach nearly USD 7 billion (EUR 6.5 billion).
Photo courtesy of Rainer Lesniewski/Shutterstock
