Friday, July 24, 2026
- 12 hours ago
- 6 min read
Alaska
Alaska Airlines expands fleet, upgrades to strengthen seafood transportation
The company said it ships 30 million pounds of seafood from Alaska every year.
Intrafish by Rachel Sapin - July 23, 2026
Alaska Airlines will double its dedicated freighter capacity under new long‑term lease agreements for four Boeing aircraft, expanding its cargo fleet from five to nine and increasing seafood transportation capacity for producers in Alaska.
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Salmon count at Iliuliuk weir shows promise after relocation
KUCB by Maggie Nelson - July 23, 2026
Two people wearing waiters and rain gear edge their way down to a creek in the middle of downtown Unalaska. It's the middle of the night, and most locals are asleep.
International
Section 301 Forced Labor Tariffs Take Effect; Seafood Gets No Exemptions as New Trade Map Takes Hold
SeafoodNews by Ryan Doyle - July 24, 2026
The Trump administration put a new set of tariffs in place on Friday, ranging from 10% to 12.5% on 60 US trading partners, representing 99.4% of US imports. Seafood received no product exemptions; the sector had been named a priority target when USTR launched the Section 301 forced labor investigations in February, and the final rule followed through.
The tariffs, imposed under the Trade Act of 1974 by USTR Ambassador Jamieson Greer at the direction of President Trump, replace the temporary 10% Section 122 levies that expired at the same moment.
Goods already in transit are exempted until 12:01 a.m. EDT Monday (July 28).
Unlike the IEEPA-based tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court in February, Section 301 authority carries an established litigation record and a full administrative record, as the Trump administration looks to make the Section 301 tariff action stick long-term.
The Rate Structure, Country by Country
The determination to apply 10% or 12.5% hinges on whether an economy has enacted and effectively enforced a prohibition on imports produced with forced labor. Economies that have passed adequate legislation or committed to do so through an Agreement on Reciprocal Trade face the lower 10% rate. The others were slapped with a 12.5% rate.
For seafood, the country-level map is what governs trade flows. Several significant updates from the June 5 proposed action emerged in the final rule. India, originally proposed at 12.5%, moved to the lower 10% rate after enacting a forced labor import prohibition following the June 5 notice.
Cambodia, Guatemala, Honduras, Sri Lanka, and Trinidad and Tobago made the same move for the same reason.
The rates now in effect for major seafood-supplying economies:
10%: Ecuador, India, Indonesia, United Kingdom, Canada*, Mexico*
12.5%: China, Norway, Vietnam, Chile, Thailand, Peru, Brazil, New Zealand, Australia, Russia
*Canada and Mexico carry 10% in the formal rate structure, but USMCA-compliant goods from both countries are fully exempted under the final rule — meaning Canadian snow crab, lobster, salmon, and groundfish, and Mexican shrimp and tuna, enter at zero additional duty as long as they qualify for USMCA treatment.
Not on the 60-country list at all:
Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland.
Their products like Icelandic cod and haddock, Faroese salmon, face zero additional Section 301 tariff.
For all flat-rate economies — those facing 10% or 12.5% — the Section 301 duty stacks on top of any applicable MFN duty.
For most seafood HTS codes, MFN rates are low enough that the new Section 301 rate is the dominant cost, but importers should calculate total duty liability at the line-item level.
Seafood Asked for Exemptions.
USTR Said No.USTR received over 1,600 public comments in response to the June 5 proposed action and heard from more than 100 witnesses over three days of hearings. Seafood importers were among those who argued for product-level relief.
The Federal Register notice, running to more than 400 pages, documents the rejection. Commenters argued that tariffs on frozen seafood should not apply because "the tariffs would not shift production to the United States" — naming salmon specifically among products where domestic production is not feasible as a substitute.
USTR dismissed the argument:
"The goal of the tariff action is not to create domestic production, but to obtain the elimination of the acts, policies, or practices found to be actionable."
Beef, by contrast, appears on the universal exemption list (Annex I of the Federal Register Notice), alongside coffee, certain fertilizer inputs, oil and gas, and other products deemed either unavailable domestically or likely to cause economy-wide disruption if tariffed. Seafood appears on no exemption list.
The Federal Register notice stated that the exemption criteria include products that "cannot be grown or produced in sufficient quantities in the United States or obtained from other sources,” the exact standard USTR used to justify the beef carve-out.
Warmwater shrimp, tilapia, and several other high-volume import categories would appear to qualify under this language. However, the Trump administration didn’t exempt those products.
What the New Map Means, Species by Species
For shrimp, the differential between India at 10% and Vietnam at 12.5% is modest, but it compounds on top of existing antidumping and countervailing duties already in place against both origins.
Ecuador at 10%, combined with its currency advantage and freight proximity, continues the trajectory that saw it pass India as the top monthly supplier in December 2025. Ecuador is running 30.4% above 2025 levels year-to-date through July; India is down 23.5% over the same period, as Expana noted in a recent import analysis.
The tariff structure reinforces what was already moving.
For whitefish, the picture is sharper. Icelandic cod and haddock compete directly against Norwegian product now carrying 12.5% and against Chinese twice-frozen pollock blocks — also at 12.5%, stacked on existing Section 301 duties from 2018. The twice-frozen pollock supply chain that has underpinned value whitefish programs in the US for two decades faces its most significant combined cost headwind yet, at a moment when global pollock supplies are also tightening.
Alaska single-frozen, exempt from all additional duty, is the structural beneficiary.
For salmon, Norway faces 12.5% while Iceland and the Faroes face zero — and the UK, which also competes in the premium fresh Atlantic salmon segment, lands at 10%. US tariffs have hit Norway's value-added salmon products so far in 2026.
According to the Norwegian Seafood Council's H1 export update, Norway's fresh and frozen fillet exports dropped 10%. The US remains Norway's dominant market for salmon fillets, representing 23% of fresh fillet exports and 30% of frozen fillets, as Expana noted in its coverage.
"The tariff dispute has reversed the growth we have seen in exports to the US in recent years, and we have to go back to 2022 to find a lower export value to this market," Norwegian Seafood Council CEO Christian Chramer said, noting salmon, snow crab, trout and king crab exports bore the brunt of the decline.
The formal rate differential that now exists between Icelandic, Faroese, UK, and Norwegian products, all competing in the same premium fresh salmon segment, may further accelerate Norway's retreat from the US market.For fishmeal and fish oil, Peru and Chile both face 12.5%.
The FRN specifically notes that "fish used for fish oil and fish meal" appears on the Department of Labor's forced labor inputs list. US aquafeed mills, omega-3 refiners, and pet food manufacturers will absorb the full duty on Peruvian and Chilean marine ingredients.
For the seafood industry, after 18 months of whiplash in which tariff rates were announced, paused, applied, struck down, and reinstated, the Section 301 regime represents yet another chapter in the Trump-era tariff saga.
While legal challenges will surely follow, the administration hopes the Section 301 route provides more stability for its trade actions.
The domestic harvester coalition that pushed hardest for this outcome got what it sought. Whether it generates the market recovery producers projected, or, as others in the industry argued throughout the process, it simply raises costs without filling the supply gap, will take months to answer.
Federal Register
Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone Off Alaska; Dusky Rockfish in the West Yakutat District of the Gulf of Alaska
A Rule by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on 07/24/2026
NMFS is prohibiting directed fishing for dusky rockfish in the West Yakutat District of the Gulf of Alaska (GOA). This action is necessary to prevent exceeding the 2026 total allowable catch (TAC) of dusky rockfish in the West Yakutat District of the GOA.
Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone Off Alaska; Pacific Ocean Perch in the West Yakutat District of the Gulf of Alaska
A Rule by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on 07/24/2026
NMFS is prohibiting directed fishing for Pacific ocean perch in the West Yakutat District of the Gulf of Alaska (GOA). This action is necessary to prevent exceeding the 2026 total allowable catch (TAC) of Pacific ocean perch in the West Yakutat District of the GOA.
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