Members of China’s seafood industry aren’t expecting the reelection of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency to have a profound impact on their sector, given the impact already felt during the president-elect’s prior administration.
During Trump’s first term as president, he implemented tariffs on Chinese goods beginning in 2018, which began at 10 percent for some goods and ultimately escalated to a wider scope of products and eventually increased in some cases to as high as 25 percent on billions of dollars of goods. Xubing Fan, the CEO of Beijing, China-based seafood marketing consultancy Seabridge International, said that most Chinese companies already adapted to tariffs after Trump’s prior term.
“I think the previous 25 percent import tax Trump added on China's products including seafood dramatically restrained Chinese seafood exports to the U.S., including farmed tilapia and catfish fillets,” Fan said.
Fan said many seafood exporters sought business elsewhere and didn’t return to the U.S. after.
“Currently, in U.S. supermarkets, you will find much less Chinese farmed, caught, or processed seafood,” Fan said. “China is no longer an important seafood-exporting country to the U.S. So, I think the necessity to further increase the import tax upon Chinese seafood in the future is low.”
Fan said another factor is the U.S. ban on Russian seafood. U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order in 2022 that was later expanded in December 2023 to include Russian-originated seafood processed in third countries, including China.
“The U.S. ban on China-processed Russian seafood like pollock fillets and wild salmon fillets also caused a significant reduction of China's processed seafood exports to the U.S.,” Fan said.
Didier Boon, CEO of Beijing-based seafood trading firm East China Seas, told SeafoodSource that a Trump presidency could be damaging for ...
