Troy E. Nehls represents the 22nd Congressional District of Texas, part of which borders the Gulf of Mexico. In April 2024, Nehls introduced the Save Our Shrimpers Act, which would ban federal funding from going toward shrimp farming, foreign shrimp exports to the U.S., or shrimp processing via international monetary institutions.
Today, the American shrimp industry is experiencing an unprecedented crisis that is threatening its very existence.
American shrimpers, many of whom I proudly represent in Congress, are core economic drivers of coastal communities whose businesses are being shuttered by an alarming rate of imported shrimp that now dominates U.S. markets.
From higher fuel costs to inflation, American shrimpers cannot survive on the current trajectory. They’re faced with difficult decisions every day about whether to sell their trawlers, keep them docked for the season, or take the risk of being able to cover the cost of a single trip.
How did we get to this point? What is or isn’t our own government doing to protect American shrimpers?
For over a year now, I’ve been asking these exact questions.
Last year, I sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai with concerns regarding recent influxes of imported shrimp into U.S. markets, and I implored them to take decisive action to protect our shrimping industry.
While I am encouraged by the Department of Commerce’s decision last fall to initiate antidumping and countervailing duty investigations of warmwater shrimp imported from Ecuador, India, and Indonesia following my bipartisan letter, there is still much more work that can and needs to be done.
For decades, taxpayer dollars have been used to bankroll foreign shrimp operations across the globe, which in part has contributed to the devastation of our own shrimp industry. International financial institutions like the World Bank’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which is predominately supported by American taxpayer dollars, began financing the construction of aquaculture facilities – primarily in Asia and South America – nearly 40 years ago.
In light of the backdrop of recent investigative reporting that suggests India is using forced and child labor with “dangerous and abusive conditions,” it is now more important than ever that our tax dollars aren’t being used to bankroll foreign shrimp farms. According to U.S. Department of Labor findings in 2021, “children in Ecuador are subjected to the worst forms of child labor,” with agriculture, including fisheries, representing 89.9 percent of working children between ages 5 to 14.
Also, imported shrimp across the board can contain dangerous bacteria, antibiotics, and drug residues, and less than 1 percent of imported shrimp are tested by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Comparatively, wild-caught shrimp from U.S. shrimpers offers the healthiest, safest, and freshest option for the consumer.
Unfortunately, heavily subsidized, farmed, and imported shrimp make up the vast majority of consumed shrimp in the United States. Worse, many of these shrimp-farming operations produce and process shrimp with forced and child labor, banned antibiotics, and weaker environmental standards.
Under no circumstance should America’s hard-earned tax dollars be used to facilitate the demise of our shrimping industry by funding foreign shrimp-farming operations. We must immediately put an end to the financing of foreign shrimp farming, protect American businesses, and allow them to prosper.
That is exactly why I introduced the Save Our Shrimpers Act. This critical legislation would prohibit federal taxpayer dollars from subsidizing foreign shrimp farms, shrimp processing, or any activity in a foreign country that supports the production, processing, or exportation of shrimp into U.S. markets.
Additionally, my legislation would require a Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation and report on the U.S. Department of Treasury’s compliance with current law, which explicitly requires U.S. executive directors, who represent the United States at international financial institutions, to vote against any measure that “would cause substantial injury to United States producers of the same, similar, or competing commodity.”
In reviewing the Treasury Department’s reported voting positions since 2004, U.S. directors have voted to support projects 25,041 times (88.7 percent), abstained from voting on 2,325 projects (8.2 percent), and voted no on just 880 projects (3.1 percent). Ensuring the Treasury Department actively opposes such financing of foreign shrimp farms would translate into reluctance by those financial institutions to approve the funding of such projects in the face of U.S. opposition.
I am proud to champion the Save Our Shrimpers Act with over a dozen members of Congress who represent American shrimpers from the Gulf Coast of Texas to the Atlantic Coast of North Carolina, illustrating a shared commitment to our hardworking American shrimpers and to keeping the industry alive.
