On 2 April, U.S. President Donald Trump followed through on earlier promises to enact “reciprocal” tariffs, announcing a set of sweeping tariffs that will hit nearly every country in the world – and could cost U.S. seafood importers billions of dollars.
Trump, who declared his tariff action “Liberation Day,” signed an order to enact 10 percent tariffs on all countries by 5 April and additional tariffs on a range of countries that will take effect 9 April. In its official fact sheet about the tariffs, the White House said the tariffs are intended to “rebuild the economy and restore national and economic security.”
“Large and persistent annual U.S. good trade deficits are caused in substantial part by a lack of reciprocity in our bilateral trade relationships,” Trump’s executive order states.
The additional tariffs vary between country, and according to the United States Trade Representative (USTR) the calculations are based on the scale of the trade deficit between the U.S. and the country in question.
An analysis by the Wall Street Journal found the math was roughly based on dividing the goods-trade deficit with each country by the amount the U.S. imported from that same country. For example, the U.S. has a USD 291.9 billion (EUR 264 billion) trade deficit with China and imports USD 433.8 billion (EUR 392.6 billion) in goods from China. Dividing those two numbers results in 0.67, or 67 percent, which is then divided in half to reach the additional 34 percent tariff against China proposed by the Trump administration.
Almost no countries escaped at least a 10 percent tariff. The uninhabited Heard and McDonald islands, a territory of Australia, is being hit with a 10 percent tariff rate despite not having any residents. Norfolk Island, which has just 2,188 residents, was also hit with a 29 percent tariff, Reuters reported.
“Tariffs will raise the cost of seafood, making the healthiest animal protein on the planet less available and more expensive,” National Fisheries Institute President and CEO Lisa Wallenda Picard said soon after the tariffs were announced. “Meanwhile, the tariffs could threaten many of the 1.6 million American jobs that, according to the federal government, U.S. commercial seafood companies support.”
Included among the long list of targets are almost every top exporter of seafood to the U.S.
While the top exporter of seafood by value to the U.S., Canada, was not listed in the reciprocal tariffs, the rest of the U.S.’s top seafood trading partners were. The second-highest exporter to the U.S. by value, Chile, will be hit with the base 10 percent tariff rate.