U.S. Customs and Border Protection plans to detain seafood linked to Chinese fishing boats suspected of using forced labor—part of the broader Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing concerns of American Samoa. KHJ News Washington, D.C., correspondent Matt Kaye reports…
CBP Acting Commissioner Pete Flores, in a story first reported by the Epoch Times, says “The President charged us to restore American seafood competitiveness by combatting unfair trade practices.”
That is also a key goal of American Samoa’s tuna industry and its advocates, including Congresswoman Uifa’atali Amata, who has been pushing to base a Coast Guard cutter in Pago Pago Harbor.
It’s also a goal of Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan, whose FISH Act, co-sponsored by Rhode Island’s Sheldon Whitehouse, has passed out of Senate Commerce Comittee…
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(Transc.) Sullivan: “They are literally a cancer on global fishing. And this bill goes after Russian, and in particular, Chinese fishing fleets, which oh, by the way, use slave labor.”
The FISH Act would help ensure seafood supplied through legal channels isn’t harvested using forced labor, stepping up Coast Guard enforcement and blacklisting IUU vessels.
CBP, meanwhile, has 52 active Withhold Release Orders, 36 of which involve China-linked entities.
CBP issued a May 28 Withhold Release Order on vessel Zhen Fa 7, ordering customs officers at all U.S. ports to block entry of seafood harvested from the Chinese-flagged ship.
Acting Commissioner Flores said in a statement, “Combatting forced labor is central to CBP’s mission to protect the economic security of the United States.”
Photo: Peter Flores, Acting Commissioner CBP
