Congresswoman Uifa’atali Amata is urging the Trump Administration not to provide a tariff carve-out, or exemption, for tuna under a recently struck trade deal with Thailand.
KHJ News Washington DC correspondent Matt Kaye reports that Congresswoman Amata wrote to U.S. Trade Ambassador Jamieson Greer, expressing “deep concern” the administration could exempt Thai tuna from the current 19-percent U.S. reciprocal tariff.
Amata stressed that eliminating those tariffs on Thailand “would have serious and unintended consequences for U.S. producers.”
She highlighted that American Samoa is “dependent on its tuna canning industry, the territory’s largest private employer,” providing roughly 2,300 jobs.
She added, “The cannery is crucial to the vitality of American fishing in the Western Pacific,” as Thailand and China “look to expand their operations in the region.”
Amata says Thailand is now the world’s “largest processor and exporter of canned tuna,” due to its lower labor costs and regulations.
And over the past two decades, the Congresswoman complains, “these advantages have driven much of the global industry offshore,” closing U.S. facilities and costing U.S. jobs.
“This trend,” she writes, “has weakened our nation’s seafood production capacity, undermined food security, and resulted in tuna companies leaving American Samoa.”
She says giving Thailand a tariff exemption on tuna would run counter to President Trump’s April Executive Order on Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness.”
That order restored U.S. fishing rights in the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument.
Photo: US Trade Ambassador Jamieson Greer
