Seafood distributors are responding to U.S. President Donald Trump’s most recent trade announcement with caution, unsure how they will be affected by 25 percent tariffs imposed on foreign steel and aluminum.
While most said they didn’t expect to be directly affected by the metal tariffs, anxieties about inflation in the food industry in general remains high.
Tom Zaffiro, CEO of Braintree, Massachusetts, U.S.A.-based seafood processor and distributor Channel Fish, told SeafoodSource he was watching the evolving situation carefully and anticipating raised prices.
“Our company’s position on tariffs is that they are generally detrimental to U.S. consumers, particularly in the food sector,” he said. "These [tariff] measures directly contradict one of the key promises of the new administration – to reduce food inflation.”
When asked about how he expected steel and aluminum tariffs to affect his business, he said that “while we do buy equipment from Canada that uses stainless steel, our primary concern at this time is the impact of tariffs on food.”
Other importers like Troy Turkin, the CEO of Westin, Florida, U.S.A.-based Supreme Crab, said that he wasn’t sure if metal tariffs would affect the seafood industry, though he was watching other trade updates. Turkin said at the 2025 Global Seafood Market Conference that tariffs affecting Southeast Asia could have a big impact on the pasteurized crab market in the U.S.
“It’s certainly a little worrying regarding what’s going to happen with China and Vietnam since red swimming crab is only produced in those two nations,” he said at the event.
A spokesperson for the National Fisheries Institute (NFI) agreed with Turkin that the metal tariffs were not likely to affect the seafood industry in obvious ways.
“We don’t see a steel and aluminum nexus at this point, but we are watching all tariff activity to keep our members updated,” the spokesperson said. “The [Trump] administration is rightly grappling with some severe national security challenges. But, deploying – and sustaining – tariffs on seafood to address those unrelated problems will create difficulties for the world’s most traded protein and will exacerbate food inflation here in the U.S., an enduring problem the president was elected to solve.”
Zaffiro also noted that there were likely to be systemic effects of prolonged tariffs on seafood.
“Although our operations primarily focus on processing U.S.-sourced fish and seafood, we anticipate that tariffs will have a significant effect on the U.S. markets in which we operate,” he said. “For instance, one of our major haddock suppliers, based in Nova Scotia, [Canada,] supplements domestic supply when the local fishing fleet is unable to meet demand. We expect these tariffs to drive up prices for both U.S. and Canadian haddock, as well as imported Norwegian haddock, which also plays a critical role in stabilizing supply during periods of domestic shortage.”
Before Trump took office, the National Retail Federation (NRF) expressed its fears that tariffs would constrict many retail markets and burden American consumers.
More recently, in response to tariffs imposed on Canada, Mexico, and China, the NRF urged the Trump administration to work with its trading partners to find solutions that would “avoid shifting the costs of shared policy failures onto the backs of American families, workers, and small businesses.”
