U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan is at it for a second year, trying to stop Russian seafood from flooding the U.S. grocery freezers. Although there is a presidential-level prohibition in place, Russia slips millions of tons of seafood to the American consumer through another country, typically China.
The loophole in the law is the subject of Sullivan’s U.S-Russian Federation Seafood Reciprocity Act of 2023. Over 18 months ago, Sullivan first attempted to pass his U.S-Russian Federation Seafood Reciprocity Act by unanimous consent, but the bill was blocked by Senate Democrats.
The current version was blocked Thursday by Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, just like it was last year.
Markey’s own state seafood industry is not supporting him in his opposition to Sullivan’s legislation. In February, the Massachusetts Seafood Collaborative called upon elected leaders to sanction Russian seafood imports. The Massachusetts Seafood Collaborative is a group of harvesters, processors and wholesalers who admit they profit off of such imports, but the group said it would stand on its values.
“Let us not forget, Massachusetts was the cradle of our own fight for independence against an imperial power, therefore, to do anything other than stand in solidarity with the courageous Ukrainian people would be to betray our values,” the collaborative said in a statement. “Therefore, we are calling on our elected officials to immediately sanction Russian fish exports into the US. We are happy to sacrifice our own economic interests for the interests of a people under siege. We are proud to do our small part in combating evil and aggression and to stand with Ukraine.”
Sullivan said to continue to allow these fish to slip through is to support Russian oligarchs, and that is against America’s interests.
“If you’re a big fisherman in Massachusetts or the great state of Alaska…you cannot export one fish to Russia. Nine years of a ban. And guess what? The United States lets Russian seafood into America almost duty free … That is called unfair by any measure,” Sullivan said last year, when he first introduced the measure.
“If you’re against this bill, you’re for Russian oligarchs who are still avoiding sanctions on seafood, you’re against the American fishermen whether in Alaska or Massachusetts – because they’re getting screwed by this uneven trade relationship – and you’re helping the Chinese. I can’t imagine anyone being against this,” he said last week on the Senate floor.
The bill tackles the issue of Russia-origin seafood that has been reprocessed in China other countries and subsequently imported into the United States. The importing of Russia seafood undermines America’s fishing families, strengthens Russia, and aids the Putin war machine.
Sullivan’s bill broadens the application of President Joe Biden’s executive order, which only banned “unaltered” imports of seafood from Russia. Now, the Russians simply launder their seafood through China, which has no such restriction.
Russia has made strides in building modern industrial super-trawlers that plunder the ocean, hauling in hundreds of tons of seafood a day in an indiscriminate way with their massive nets. The ships have not only catch capabilities, they have processing machinery and freezers on board — all with efficiencies that are said to be devastating to the ocean’s food chain.
Russia has had a prohibition on the import of U.S. seafood products since 2014, after U.S. sanctions were imposed by the Obama Administration in response to the Russian invasion and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. Since 2018, Sen. Sullivan has made sanctions on Russian overfishing and importation to the United States a priority.
