Alaska Governor Bill Walker has called for a tripling of seafood exports from his state to China “as soon as possible.”
China, which has already been the state’s largest export partner for the last seven years, imported USD 800 million (EUR 680 million) of Alaska seafood in 2017.
“We would love to triple our output,” Walker told a local publication during the state’s largest-ever trade mission to Shanghai. “It would be one of our biggest goals in the years to come. I am not sure when it would be achieved, but I would like to have it happen as soon as we can.”
Walker also commented on the timeline of the trip, with the Trump administration seemingly revving up a trade war with China.
“We thought this is the perfect timing because of the trade issues that are going on,” Walker said. “We wanted to show the opportunities of increasing trade from Alaska to China.”
The governor noted that nearly 100 cargo flights from Asia land in Alaska every day, and they return to their home countries basically empty. Walker is interested in sending them back full of Alaska seafood.
“We have never had problems with the marketing. We just need to get more [seafood] here. And that’s what we’re working on now,” he said.
The trade mission is a nearly two-week excursion, and Walker has been joined by 50 other representatives from 30 companies based in his state, representing sectors from fisheries to tourism to investment. Those in attendance on the trip included Jeff Welbourn, the senior director of Trident Seafoods’ China Business Office, and Jason Ogilvie, the president and CEO of Golden Harvest Alaska Seafood.
Included in the visit was a stop at Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou, China and at a Hema store – a high-tech chain of supermarkets that Alibaba is expanding throughout the country.
The governor’s trade mission follows a visit made last April by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Anchorage, which has become a popular destination for Chinese tourists.
Currently, China consumes 37.5 percent of the world’s seafood production, and that number is expected to grow to nearly half of the world’s seafood and aquatic production over the next decade.
Photo courtesy of Alibaba
