May 2003 Trade Forum

One way to win a race is to run faster,” says Antonio Diaz, president of Ocean Garden Products. “The other way is to make your competitor run slower.”

Indeed, slowing down tough international competitors is what the U.S. antidumping laws are about: high tariffs to put foreigners at a tax disadvantage.

This is what Louisiana crawfish processors did to the so-called “communist crawfish” from China. It’s what domestic salmon farmers did to Chile, what the Catfish Farmers of America are now doing to Vietnam and what the domestic shrimp industry is considering doing to a dozen-plus countries from Asia to Central America.

You’ve seen the headlines.

But the larger reality is that while the trade laws may slow down the competition, no industry can hide behind tariff walls forever. In global seafood markets, either learn to run — or swim — faster, or lose the race. Adapt to modern aquaculture and innovative marketing, or drown.

This was the most important lesson on display at the International Boston Seafood Show in March. There were so many clever innovators busy working some 1,300 booths on three floors of the Hynes Convention Center.

Take David Gautier, of Pascagoula Ice & Freezer. This Mississippi entrepreneur has come a long way from the ice business. Gautier deals in Gulf shrimp that is caught in U.S. waters. Knowing that consumers will pay a price premium for such delicious shrimp, Gautier is busy developing niche markets.

But at the same time — aware that less-expensive farmed foreign shrimp dominates the U.S. marketplace — Gautier has also invested in a shrimp farm in Belize. That’s smart.

Or consider the hard-working Christine Ngo of H&N Seafoods in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Ngo came to California as a refugee from Vietnam in the late 1970s. When I happened upon her booth, Ngo was busy talking to a couple of good ole boys from Alabama about buying some more U.S. farm-raised catfish.

But while she happily buys American, Ngo’s business also relies upon imports, including Asian tiger shrimp and catfish (or basa) from Vietnam. Ngo wants nothing to do with antidumping tariffs aimed at distorting these markets.

The Seattle-based American Pride Seafoods, which had a prominent booth with patriotic red-white-and-blue decorations, was another impressive model of the global marketplace.

American Pride representatives offered tasty samples of U.S. farm-raised catfish. But they also served Norwegian salmon — thanks to another American Pride division, Frionor USA, which is a subsidiary of American Seafoods Group.

The catfish part of American Pride is at war with foreign competitors, while the salmon part is foreign.

At the end of the day, the realities of the global marketplace cannot be escaped. Despite the antidumping tariffs, Americans are buying more Chilean salmon than ever, and you can still buy frozen Chinese crawfish tail meat — even in grocery stores in New Orleans.

The race always goes to the fastest swimmers.

Greg Rushford is editor and publisher of the Rushford Report, a Washington monthly newsletter on trade politics at www.RushfordReport.com