July 1, 2019 5:20 a.m.
Last Week Oregon Senator Ron Wyden along with Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton, introduced legislation they say would expand disaster relief to fisheries harmed by tariffs.
A release said currently the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association guidelines used to identify the causes of fisheries disasters does not explicitly include tariffs. The release said the legislation would amend the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Act to require NOAA to evaluate the impacts of duties imposed on American seafood, ensuring the Department of Commerce receives a complete overview of factors affecting a fishery in all fishery declaration designations.
Wyden said American businesses are being “hit hard” by retaliatory tariffs from what he called President Trump’s “ill-conceived trade agenda”. He said that unfortunately fisheries are no exception. Wyden said west-coast seafood is sought after internationally and Oregonians earning a living in fisheries should be able to command top dollar on the global market, rather than be “ensnared in the cross-fire of Trump’s escalating trade war”.
Moulton said that “good trade policy, when it comes to seafood, gets more fish we catch into markets and on tables around the world”. He said instead the president’s trade war is “robbing American fisherman of their paychecks and making our grocery store runs more expensive”.