The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) is calling on the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to ban seafood caught or processed by China, citing concerns over forced labor.
CECC Chair Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Co-Chair Representative Christopher Smith (R-New Jersey), along with commissioners Representative Dale Strong (R-Alabama) and Representative Tom Suozzi (D-New York) wrote a letter to Trump calling for an executive order to ban seafood either caught by Chinese-linked vessels or processed in China.
“The reason is simple. Chinese seafood is too often produced through forced labor and enters our market at prices honest American fishermen cannot match. That is not competition. It is abuse shipped into the United States,” the letter states.
The letter referenced Trump’s April 2025 executive order, and said that order acknowledged the challenges faced by the U.S. seafood industry due to illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and forced labor in seafood supply chains. It states that among those challenges, China is the biggest obstacle to advancing the U.S. seafood industry’s competitiveness.
“China is the most immediate test of your policy, leveraging its vast fishing fleets and processing plants to cheat American fishermen, exploit vulnerable workers, and project power at sea,” the letter states. “The United States should not help pay for these egregious behaviors. I urge you to use your authority to make our country the least hospitable market in the world for Chinese harvested seafood.”
The CECC has criticized Chinese seafood in the past, and its most-recent annual report in 2025 called on the U.S. to scrutinize Chinese seafood and do more to combat forced labor. Seafood from China has been under higher scrutiny from the U.S. government since a 2023 report by The Outlaw Ocean Project identifying forced and Uyghur labor in the Chinese supply chain. The organization followed that report up with evidence of North Korean labor in the Chinese seafood supply chain, and the CECC called for investigations by the government following the reports.
The latest letter calls for even more action against China in light of both those public investigations and congressional testimony that has occurred since.
It also points out that multiple federal agencies have identified China as a forced-labor concern, including the Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which has added seafood to its list of priorities under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
“Those steps were right. The United States market is awash in criminally tainted seafood from China,” the letter states.
The CECC said eliminating IUU-associated seafood from the U.S. market would benefit U.S. commercial fishing, increasing the value of fisheries and landings.
“Your administration already has a workable precedent and expertise already in place to conduct such a ban. The Russian seafood import prohibition covers seafood even when it is routed through third countries or substantially transformed elsewhere,” the letter states. “China should face the same anti-evasion rule. Seafood harvested by Chinese-linked vessels should not be washed clean through relabeling, repacking, transshipment, or third-country processing.”
