President Donald Trump is in an escalating trade fight with Canada over a simple principle: American workers and industries should not be disadvantaged by foreign interests.
There is another American resource that deserves the same scrutiny: our fish.
The numbers are startling. Roughly 75% of all fish caught commercially in the Gulf of America benefit just two foreign companies. About half benefit a single Canadian company. In the Atlantic, that same Canadian company benefits from roughly a quarter of all fish caught.
These aren’t Canadian waters. They’re ours.
And the fish being removed aren’t ending up on American dinner plates.
Every year, industrial reduction fleets remove billions of forage fish, primarily menhaden, from American waters and grind them into fish meal and fish oil. Much of that product feeds farm-raised fish and other animals in overseas markets.
Meanwhile, American fishermen, charter captains, restaurants, and coastal communities depend on those same forage fish remaining in the water.
That is because menhaden aren’t just another commercial commodity. They are one of the foundations of the marine food web. Striped bass, bluefish, tuna, whales, ospreys, and countless other species depend on them.
Take too many forage fish out of the water, and the consequences don’t stop with menhaden. They travel all the way up the food chain.
That matters economically.
A decade ago, recreational striped bass fishing alone contributed more than $13 billion to the U.S. economy and supported more than 100,000 jobs. Today, striped bass harvest is at a 30-year low. In the Chesapeake Bay, where roughly 70% of the East Coast’s striped bass are born, scientists and fishermen have raised increasingly urgent concerns about the availability of menhaden and the health of predators that depend on them. This includes ospreys, which are experiencing nest failures at rates not seen since DDT was banned in 1972.
Against that backdrop, consider who benefits from the industrial harvest.
In 2017, New Brunswick-based Cooke Inc. acquired Omega Protein, one of the largest reduction-fishing operations in the United States. Cooke said at the time that acquiring Omega would diversify the “supply side” of its seafood business.
That supply starts in American waters.
The irony is hard to miss.
The Trump administration is imposing 50% tariffs on certain Canadian goods and moving to block imports of others in response to what it describes as Canada’s discriminatory treatment of American commerce. The administration’s stated objective is to defend American producers, jobs, and industries.
Yet offshore, we continue allowing foreign-owned companies to benefit from the industrial removal of one of America’s most valuable renewable natural resources.
Trump and Donald Trump Jr. have already drawn attention to Canadian control of the menhaden industry. They were right to ask the question.
But ownership is only half the story.
The bigger question is why America continues managing its most important forage fish as though their greatest economic value comes from industrial-scale harvesting and grinding them into animal feed.
It doesn’t.
A menhaden swimming off Long Island, Virginia, or Louisiana is doing work for Americans. It feeds the striped bass caught by a recreational angler, the tuna targeted by an offshore charter captain, and the birds and whales that support coastal tourism. It helps sustain fisheries, restaurants, tackle shops, marinas, and communities up and down our coasts.
Once that fish is removed from the water and reduced to meal or oil, all of those potential benefits disappear with it.
And the supposed trade-off in American jobs is far less compelling than industry defenders suggest. One foreign-owned reduction plant in Virginia employs around 250 people. Compare that with the more than 100,000 jobs supported by recreational striped bass fishing alone.
This isn’t an argument against Canada, or against trade. And it isn’t an argument against commercial fishing.
It is an argument for putting American fishermen, businesses, and coastal communities first when we decide how American public resources are managed.
For decades, industrial reduction fishing has been treated as though hauling the greatest possible volume of forage fish out of the ocean is itself an economic benefit.
We now know better.
On the Atlantic Coast, fishery managers acknowledged last year that the science used to set previous menhaden quotas was flawed and had allowed years of excessive harvest. Similar industrial reduction operations have already been pushed out of every Atlantic state’s waters except Virginia. In the Gulf, Louisiana and Mississippi remain the only states that permit the practice.
America doesn’t need to keep sacrificing the bottom of its food chain to maintain an outdated industry, particularly when so much of the limited economic benefit flows overseas.
TRUMP, DON’T STOP WITH GREENLAND. TAKE HANS ISLAND, TOO
The administration has made protecting American workers and American industries from unfair foreign competition a centerpiece of its trade agenda.
Our waters deserve the same “America First” principle. American fish should benefit Americans.
Whit Fosburgh is the executive director of the Forage Fish Campaign.