    [Joint House and Senate Hearing, 119 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                           DARK NETS, ILLICIT LABOR_
                        CONFRONTING CHINA'S IUU FISHING
                            AND SEAFOOD SUPPLY CHAIN

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   before the

                  CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

                        ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                                 APRIL 16, 2026

                                   __________

     Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China

                    [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                  Available at www.cecc.gov or www.govinfo.gov

                                    ______

                     U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

    63-610 PDF                WASHINGTON : 2026

                  CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

                        LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

    Senate                               House

    DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska, Chair          CHRIS SMITH, New Jersey, Co-chair
    TOM COTTON, Arkansas                 ZACHARY NUNN, Iowa
    JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon                 ELISE STEFANIK, New York
    TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois            DALE STRONG, Alabama
    ANDY KIM, New Jersey                 JEN KIGGANS, Virginia
    LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER, Delaware       JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts
                                         THOMAS SUOZZI, New York
                                         SUHAS SUBRAMANYAM, Virginia
                                         JAMES WALKINSHAW, Virginia

                         EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

                               Not yet appointed

                          Scott Flipse, Staff Director
                       Mary Vigil, Deputy Staff Director

                                      (ii)

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------

                                   Statements

    Opening Statement of Hon. Dan Sullivan, a U.S. Senator from
      Alaska; Chair, Congressional-Executive Commission on China.....     1
    Statement of Hon. Chris Smith, a Representative from New Jersey
      and Co-chair, Congressional-Executive Commission on China......     5
    Statement of Hon. Dale Strong, a Representative from Alabama.....     6
    Statement of Ian Urbina, director and founder, The Outlaw Ocean
      Project........................................................     7
    Statement of Hon. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Senator from Rhode Island     9
    Statement of Scott W. Clendenin, RADM, USCG (Ret.), owner, Dog
      Zebra Solutions LLC and strategic advisor to ``The Geopolitics
      of the Ocean--Why Healthy Seas Are Vital to America's National
      Security,'' (World Wildlife Fund, 2025)........................    10
    Statement of Hon. Dean A. Pinkert, former commissioner and Vice
      Chairman of the U.S. International Trade Commission and special
      advisor, Corporate Accountability Lab..........................    12
    Video testimony of fisherman Muhammad Sahrudin...................    13

                                    APPENDIX

                              Prepared Statements

    Urbina, Ian......................................................    27
    Clendenin, Scott W...............................................    29
    Pinkert, Dean A..................................................    34

    Sullivan, Hon. Dan...............................................    36
    Smith, Hon. Chris................................................    38

                           Submissions for the Record

    Questions for Admiral Clendenin from Chair Sullivan..............    41
    Submission of the Southern Shrimp Alliance.......................    45

    CECC Truth in Testimony Disclosure Form..........................    57
    Witness Biographies..............................................    59

                                     (iii)

                           DARK NETS, ILLICIT LABOR--
                        CONFRONTING CHINA'S IUU FISHING
                            AND SEAFOOD SUPPLY CHAIN

                                  ----------

                            THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 2026

                                Congressional-Executive
                                           Commission on China,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The hearing was held from 10:09 a.m. to 11:36 a.m., in Room
    562, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, DC, Senator
    Dan Sullivan, Chair, Congressional-Executive Commission on
    China, presiding.
        Also present: Co-chair Chris Smith, Senators Kim and
    Whitehouse, and Representative Strong.

     OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DAN SULLIVAN, A SENATOR FROM ALASKA
         AND CHAIR, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

        Chair Sullivan. The Commission will come to order. We are
    here today to examine illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing
    by the People's Republic of China. What we're dealing with is a
    state-backed system run by the Chinese Communist Party that
    combines illegal fishing, market manipulation, some of the
    worst environmental standards on oceans in the world, gray
    fleets that don't abide by any international treaties, and
    forced labor, all in one supply chain. And it's happening at
    scale--what we call IUU fishing. This system has real
    consequences for American workers, for law-abiding American
    fishermen--particularly in my state, the great state of
    Alaska--and for the integrity of the entire global seafood
    market. The PRC has built the world's largest distant-water
    fishing fleet. These vessels do not simply compete, they
    overwhelm.
        And as China always does, they cheat. They show up in other
    countries' waters, hundreds if not thousands of these gray
    fleet vessels. They push into exclusive economic zones, where
    they're not supposed to be. They ignore quotas and
    environmental standards. They transship and relabel the catch
    to hide its origin. And they use forced labor, slave labor.
    This is not fair competition. Alaska fishermen can't compete
    against slave labor. It is a strategy of economic coercion that
    has direct consequences here at home, but also overseas.
        My state I like to refer to as the superpower of seafood.
    We produce over 60 percent of the wild-caught seafood in the
    United States--commercial, subsistence, sport. In Alaska, we
    have some of the best-managed fisheries in the world. We
    certainly have challenges like bycatch, but our fishermen
    generally follow the law. They respect environmental standards.
    They manage sustainably. They are very focused on preserving
    resources for future generations. Alaska fishermen, American
    fishermen, should not be forced to compete against gray fleets
    from China that disregard rules, benefit from state subsidies,
    flood global markets with cheap products tied to illegal
    practices, all the while destroying fish stocks through
    trawling and other operations on the high seas.
        Again, this is not fair competition. And it gets worse.
    There's credible evidence that parts of the PRC seafood supply
    chain involve forced labor, slave labor, including Uyghur labor
    and North Korean labor, in seafood processing. North Koreans
    and Indonesians, and others, are also being used on Chinese
    fishing boats in conditions that resemble slave labor. So when
    we talk about IUU fishing, we are not just talking about
    resource theft and environmental degradation. We are talking
    about a system in which illegal fishing, hidden sourcing, labor
    exploitation, market distortion, and horrendous environmental
    standards for sustainable ocean fisheries are all connected.
    This should concern all of us.
        Then add Russia to this mix. Russian seafood can be
    processed in China, relabeled, and then pushed back into global
    markets. This undermines sanctions and further distorts prices.
    It should not be possible, but it is happening now as we speak.
    This is a serious problem, and it deserves serious attention.
    Fortunately, we are beginning to act. I weighed in extensively
    with the Trump administration to communicate how much Alaska
    fishermen need a comprehensive ban on Russian seafood imports
    into the United States to continue. Russia banned the
    importation of American seafood in 2014.
        We have not been able to export one fish to Russia since
    2014. You want to talk about an unlevel playing field? We were
    able to get a ban on Russian seafood into the United States.
    When they tried to launder their seafood through China, we
    clamped down on that as well. I was happy to see the Trump
    administration renew that ban just a few weeks ago to help
    maintain and strengthen Federal measures, ensure a level
    playing field against Russia, and promote Alaskan and American
    fishermen and coastal communities that support them.
        Congress has also begun to respond. Two weeks ago, the
    Senate unanimously passed my Fighting Foreign Illegal Seafood
    Harvests Act, the FISH Act. This is an effort, a comprehensive
    effort that I've been working on for many years with my friend
    and colleague Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, that
    recognizes the huge threat of IUU fishing, not just as an
    environmental issue, but as an economic issue, a labor issue, a
    national security issue. When Senator Whitehouse and I were at
    the Munich Security Conference--not this year but last year and
    the year before--the AFRICOM commander, the four-star Marine
    general in charge of U.S. AFRICOM, the combatant commander for
    AFRICOM, met with a bunch of Senators saying the number one
    national security issue he's dealing with right now is IUU
    fishing from China off the coast of Africa, if you can believe
    that.
        This is an issue that combines national security, forced
    labor, human trafficking, environmental degradation, and
    sustainable oceans, all wrapped up in one. Our FISH Act is the
    most comprehensive enforcement effort to combat IUU fishing in
    the history of Congress. And it passed in a unanimous way in
    the U.S. Senate. So we're hoping our House colleagues will get
    that one over the goal line soon, and I'm confident that we
    will. Congress also passed, and the President signed into law,
    a provision that I included in the NDAA last year, barring the
    Pentagon from selling or procuring any Chinese seafood imports
    into our commissaries or military dining facilities. Our
    servicemen and women and their families should not be eating
    communist fish. We should be eating freedom fish from Alaska
    and America, and we were able to start an important way in
    which to do that. I'm pretty darn sure Chinese military members
    are not eating great wild Alaskan salmon, so we shouldn't be
    eating their fish, especially given how it's harvested.
        I've also been the leading advocate for elevating the role
    of seafood within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. I'm very
    honored to announce that just yesterday the Secretary of
    Agriculture, the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of
    Commerce, and the NEC Chairman Kevin Hassett and I announced
    the USDA Office of Seafood Policy--this is something I've been
    working on for 10 years and we finally did it--to enable the
    farmers of the sea, our great American fishermen, to have many
    of the same benefits that our farmers have from USDA and have
    the White House fully coordinate American seafood policy. In
    our press conference and roundtable yesterday with many
    American fishermen throughout the country, we talked a lot
    about the issues we are going to be focused on in this hearing.
    It's progress.
        If illegal seafood can still be caught in one place,
    processed in another, relabeled, and sold in the United States,
    then we have significant gaps to close. If Withhold Release
    Orders from Customs are not brought robustly, if traceability
    remains incomplete, and if import controls are still too easy
    to circumvent, then bad actors will continue to exploit these
    weaknesses. That is why this hearing matters. We need to
    understand more fully where our enforcement tools are working,
    where they are falling short, and what more should be done.
        I'm particularly interested in hearing from our experts
    today on the utility of tools like the Uyghur Forced Labor
    Prevention Act. That was a bill that Chairman Smith and Senator
    Rubio, now our Secretary of State, got passed into law, that
    banned the importation of products from China that use Uyghur
    forced labor. One of my questions today will be, if the Chinese
    are using forced labor for fisheries, why are we allowing any
    fish from China into the United States, not just the fish going
    to our commissaries and military dining facilities? Senator
    Merkley and I have introduced a bill to follow on that, the
    Uyghur Genocide Accountability and Sanctions Act, that
    reinforces some of these provisions. As it moves through the
    process, maybe there's more we can do with it. We're certainly
    open to suggestions from our witnesses.
        At this time this is not a challenge the United States
    faces alone. Countries around the world are dealing with the
    same tactics--as I mentioned, African countries, Latin American
    countries. The same coercive patterns, the same gray fleets,
    Chinese fleets, that ravage the ocean, the same difficulty of
    enforcing rules against these fleets that operate at scale and
    in the shadows. We need to work with our partners to improve
    enforcement capacity and increase the cost of this illegal IUU
    behavior. Though China's IUU fishing is a global and complex
    problem, at the end of the day the principle here is simple. If
    you are engaged in illegal fishing, if you are exploiting
    workers, if you are using slave labor, if you are hiding all of
    these things, then you should not have access to the American
    market, period. That should be the standard.
        If we banned all Russian seafood, which we have, why
    shouldn't we also ban all Chinese seafood, which we should.
    This hearing is an opportunity to expose the Chinese IUU
    fishing system that impacts more than just sustainable and
    healthy oceans. It's a human trafficking racket. It is an
    opportunity to identify where our policies need to be stronger
    and make clear that the United States intends to defend lawful
    producers, uphold human rights, and enforce the laws--
    particularly [former Commission] chairman and Senator, now
    Secretary, Rubio.
        [The prepared statement of Chair Sullivan appears in the
    Appendix.]
        I want to thank our witnesses for helping bring
    transparency to what is designed to stay hidden. I want to
    introduce them, because we have an expert panel.
        Ian Urbina is the founder and director of The Outlaw Ocean
    Project, a Washington, DC.-based nonprofit journalism
    organization that investigates human rights, environmental, and
    labor abuses across the world's oceans. Before launching the
    project, he spent nearly 17 years as a staff reporter for the
    New York Times. His work has earned numerous awards. His New
    Yorker articles and political articles were exceptional, and
    I've cited them many times in testimony. His awards include a
    Pulitzer Prize, two George Polk Awards, and an Emmy. This is
    journalism at its finest and most important.
        Rear Admiral Scott Clendenin has served 33 years on active
    duty in the U.S. Coast Guard and retired as Assistant
    Commandant for Response Policy where he oversaw operational
    policy across seven mission areas. He spent 14 years at sea on
    six Coast Guard cutters, commanded four of them, and led
    international multi-mission patrols involving narcotics
    interdiction, fisheries enforcement, mass migration response,
    search and rescue, and disaster response. Ashore he held senior
    intelligence and policy roles supporting national operations
    and interagency efforts. He is a 1990 graduate of the U.S.
    Coast Guard Academy.
        And finally, the Honorable Dean Pinkert, who is an
    international trade and human rights lawyer and consultant who
    serves as a special advisor to Corporate Accountability Lab. He
    spent 10 years as a commissioner at the International Trade
    Commission, including two as the vice chairman. He has
    testified before Congress and has written and spoken widely on
    trade policies, including U.S. efforts to prevent the
    importation of goods produced by forced laborers.
        I want to welcome the witnesses. I want to hear from our
    Co-chairman--his opening statement. Then we look forward to the
    statements from our witnesses.
        Mr. Chairman.

    STATEMENT OF HON. CHRIS SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW JERSEY
                      AND CO-CHAIR, CONGRESSIONAL-
                     EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

        Co-chair Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and
    thank you for your extraordinary leadership on the FISH Act.
    You know, I've been in Congress now 46 years. Very often,
    because of the filibuster and the unbelievable power one member
    has to stop a bill . . . you were able to navigate, overcome
    just tremendous odds to get this piece of legislation passed by
    the Senate. It will pass in the House. I've already talked to
    the Chairman, that you have continually talked to--Bruce
    Westerman--who's a great chairman. He's all in. He's had his
    hearings himself.
        But you did--and people have to know this--the nearly
    impossible. Because there would be a hold on this bill. I know
    the four or five people who would have done it. You navigated
    that just brilliantly, and I want to thank you for that. The
    bill will pass, I think people know, unanimously. And again,
    it's comprehensive. It is a historic, landmark piece of
    legislation to combat foreign, illegal, unreported, and
    unregulated--IUU--fishing. The Sullivan FISH Act will blacklist
    offenders from U.S. ports, bolster the U.S. Coast Guard's
    enforcement capabilities, and advance international and
    bilateral negotiations to achieve enforceable agreements.
    Again, we will just back your leadership in the House and get
    this over the finish line and signed by the President.
        Let me also say too, your amendment that you got into the
    NDAA to ban the purchase of these products by our commissaries,
    the PXs, we had written the Biden administration--and that
    would be Marco Rubio and I--frequently saying, all of the
    agencies of government who buy fish, and were the biggest
    purchasers of fish in the world, how could we be doing that
    when it is being made with forced labor in violation of the
    Uyghur Act, as well as the Uyghur Human Rights Act? And we get
    crickets. You know, they didn't do a thing. You've now put it
    into law, and I can't say [enough] how grateful all of us are
    for your extraordinary leadership. It's just amazing, and it's
    going to make the difference.
        And I do hope your constituents know, because in addition
    to being a fundamental human rights issue, it also is a great
    issue for your fishermen. I have many in my state of New
    Jersey. They can't compete against unfair trading of that kind,
    where you force people to be on these boats. And again, Ian, at
    great risk to his investigators--and I mean great risk, being
    on the boats themselves--were able to expose this. And yet we
    really--until your law, and it's going to be a law--we got
    nothing. You know, we got a lot of, Oh, wow, that's something.
    But nobody would say, let's really do something. And again,
    four years of the Biden administration, crickets. They wouldn't
    do it. And I can't tell you how upset I am with them.
        At our Commission hearing in 2023, we did hear from Ian,
    who did a tremendous job. I like the way you [the Chair] said,
    you know, outstanding leadership on the journalistic side. You
    [the Chair] have shown us outstanding legislative leadership,
    Mr. Chairman, to get this legislation passed by the U.S.
    Senate. We did have a hearing. We called it ``From Bait to
    Plate: How Forced Labor in China Taints America's Seafood
    Supply Chain.'' And across the board, whether it be calamari or
    whatever it might be, we're talking about a highly tainted
    industry with forced labor. And you know, nobody does forced
    labor as horribly and as egregiously as Xi Jinping does. Of
    course, a whole industry now has been tainted. And again, Ian,
    you're the one who broke the story on all this.
        You know, I want to thank you. I do have a long statement,
    but we do want to get to our witnesses. I ask, with unanimous
    consent, that it be made a part of the record. But I can't
    thank you enough, Mr. Chairman. I mean, this is leadership. I
    hope people realize how hard it is to get a human rights bill
    passed in the U.S. Senate, and you've achieved it. Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Co-chair Smith appears in the
    Appendix.]
        Chair Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It was a team
    effort. Senator Whitehouse, I think, is going to show up here
    in a little bit. He was my partner on this.
        Congressman, do you have an opening statement?

                     STATEMENT OF HON. DALE STRONG,
                     A REPRESENTATIVE FROM ALABAMA

        Representative Strong. Well, Mr. Chairman, it's an honor to
    be back again with each of you. Thank you all for being here
    today, our witnesses. This is a very distinguished group that
    is before this Commission. Think about this: China's illegal
    fishing practices and forced labor systems--totally
    unacceptable. Alabama's red snapper fishery is one of the most
    well managed and profitable in the Gulf, yet our local
    fishermen are forced to compete with cartel-backed poachers and
    subsidized foreign fleets that ignore conservation standards.
    And I think that that right there is working against America. I
    just commend both of you, especially because this wasn't an
    easy fight. But I think we're definitely going in the right
    direction.
        In this opening statement, I just want to commend both of
    you for this. And we'll roll with questions later. I thank each
    of you for being here. And Ian, I thank you for your hard work.
    Not an easy lift that you went through, but I can tell you, the
    world saw it. There's no doubt. And I thank each of you for
    being here. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
        Chair Sullivan. Thank you.
        We're going to begin, speaking of forced labor, with a very
    quick video. We will start with the testimony of our three
    distinguished witnesses, and then we'll wrap that up with the
    short video. Then we will have questions for the panel.
        It's good to see Senator Kim here as well. Do you want to
    say anything? Okay.
        Why don't we begin? I've already introduced our witnesses,
    again, three distinguished witnesses. I want to begin with Ian
    Urbina, who's done such a great job on The Outlaw Ocean
    Project, and hear from him. You have five minutes for an
    opening statement, and if you wish to submit a longer written
    statement for the record, we will certainly accept that. Mr.
    Urbina.

                        STATEMENT OF IAN URBINA,
             DIRECTOR AND FOUNDER, THE OUTLAW OCEAN PROJECT

        Mr. Urbina. Thank you for that. I'll try to make the five-
    minute deadline. I'll read fast.
        Chair Sullivan. That's all right, I didn't make my five-
    minute deadline. There's a lot to say here.
        [Laughter.]
        Mr. Urbina. Thank you, Chair Sullivan, Co-chair Smith, and
    the rest of the Commission for inviting me to speak. It's an
    honor to be back before you. Last time I was here was in 2023,
    when the Commission asked me to testify about an investigation
    by my news team, The Outlaw Ocean Project, into China's role in
    global seafood. That reporting focused on China's more than
    6,500 industrial fishing vessels and its hundreds of processing
    plants. It documented debt bondage, passport confiscation,
    avoidable deaths, fatal beatings, trafficked workers, illegal
    fishing, and a state-coordinated program forcing thousands of
    workers from Xinjiang and North Korea into seafood processing
    plants.
        Much of the product from those plants was bound for the
    U.S., including U.S. military bases and congressional
    cafeterias, in violation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention
    Act (UFLPA) and the equivalent law tied to North Korean labor
    known as CAATSA. In the wake of that reporting, Congress, the
    executive branch, and a small handful of seafood companies took
    action. I'm here today to discuss our current investigation,
    which will be published in the coming weeks, and which examines
    the global aquaculture industry, including China's role in it.
    By way of context, seafood is the world's most heavily traded
    food commodity by value, and aquaculture, or fish farming, is
    the industry's fastest growing sector. As of 2022, more than
    half of all seafood worldwide was farmed, rather than caught at
    sea.
        This growth has been driven in part by a marketing claim
    that fish farming is sustainable because it reduces pressure on
    wild fisheries. The problem is that, for much of the industry,
    that claim is false. Roughly two-thirds of global aquaculture
    depends on feed made from wild-caught fish, in the form of
    fishmeal and fish oil--think of seafood that people eat most--
    so salmon, shrimp, tilapia, sea bream. In other words, many
    farmed fish are fed the very wild fish the industry claims it's
    helping to spare. Not all aquaculture works this way. Roughly a
    third of global fish farming focuses on non-fed species, such
    as clams, oysters, and mussels. That form of aquaculture can
    indeed be sustainable.
        But most fish farming depends on fed fish. And our
    investigation found that this segment of the industry prefers
    to begin the story of sustainability and ethical sourcing at
    the farm. If you start the story earlier, however, with the
    feed, a very different picture emerges. Our recent
    investigation, called ``Food for Feed,'' did just that. Over
    the past two years we mapped and reported on roughly 1,400
    fishmeal plants worldwide. We boarded and inspected ships
    supplying them. We traced the farms to which the feed goes. And
    we tracked the resulting seafood. Our goal was to document the
    hidden costs of fish farming.
        In Russia's Far East, we found forced labor on ships,
    farms, and in factories. In Western Sahara, we revealed the
    industry helping prop up Morocco's military occupation. In
    Gambia and Mauritania, we discovered fish that once fed local
    communities increasingly diverted into fishmeal factories for
    export, worsening food insecurity in countries including India
    and Peru, the industry was tied to at least 80 incidents of
    civil unrest, some quite violent, often labor strikes and
    community protests over polluted water and stench from
    factories cooking thousands of tons of decomposing fish. These
    are what economists call externalities, costs pushed onto
    distant countries and communities while wealthier consumers
    enjoy the luxury seafood produced as a result.
        So what does any of this have to do with China? China is
    the largest producer, exporter, and consumer of seafood in the
    world. It's also the single biggest exporter of seafood to the
    United States. And it is rapidly expanding fish farming so it
    does not have to send so many vessels onto the high seas or
    into foreign waters. China now grows about four times as much
    fish as it catches, and huge quantities of that farmed seafood
    are exported, including to the United States. What's striking
    is where much of this expansion is happening--Xinjiang and
    Tibet.
        Fish farming typically takes place, elsewhere in the world,
    along coasts, in near-shore cages or pens. But China is
    expanding it in mountainous and desert regions that are among
    the most landlocked places on Earth. Our investigation mapped
    the supply chains of more than 1,200 fish farms in Xinjiang and
    Tibet. We found seafood from these farms going to dozens of
    countries, including the U.S., and to companies supplying
    public institutions such as military bases, public schools, and
    congressional cafeterias.
        Not only is that a violation of the UFLPA, but some of
    these farms in Xinjiang are certified as sustainable by U.S.-
    based programs such as Best Aquaculture Practices, which seems
    mystifying in light of the U.S. law. I do not need to remind
    this Commission that Tibet and Xinjiang are among the most
    repressive regions in China. In Tibet, the government has
    relocated roughly half a million people, leveling villages and
    monasteries for projects including hydroelectric dams and fish
    farms. In Xinjiang, more than a million people have been held
    in detention camps while the government has carried out large-
    scale land seizures, forced sterilizations, and criminal
    penalties for speaking native languages or practicing religious
    and cultural traditions.
        That seafood from these regions is still reaching the
    United States shows how much work remains. American seafood
    producers, grocers, and food service companies such as Sysco
    continue to rely on certification schemes that claim to police
    sustainability and forced labor in places like China, where
    spot checks at factories, ships, or farms are effectively
    impossible. China is also a place where asking tough questions
    about Uyghurs, Tibetans, or human rights generally can get a
    company, civil society group, or journalists expelled. Yet the
    cost savings are so enticing that industry and certifiers and
    journalists continue to make that Faustian bargain.
        Let's be clear: Repression in these regions is one of
    China's hidden costs. It is the externality that helps produce
    cheap seafood. It is part of China's competitive advantage and
    helps explain the trade surplus in this commodity. The UFLPA
    was enacted partly to level that playing field. So were tools
    like the Global Magnitsky Act. Customs and Border Protection
    has used Withhold Release Orders to stop imports suspected of
    being tied to forced labor. Congress has pressed companies
    through letters and hearings like this one, and tightened
    purchasing rules for federally funded institutions. Congress
    has also, in rare cases, forced companies to do due diligence,
    putting the burden on industry, rather than on journalists or
    civil society groups, to prove that supply chains are free of
    illegal or unethical hidden costs. The bottom line then is
    this: The tools exist. The question now is whether they'll get
    used.
        Thank you for your time.
        [The prepared statement of Ian Urbina appears in the
    Appendix.]
        Chair Sullivan. Thank you, Ian. I'm going to call an
    audible here and have Senator Whitehouse say a few opening
    lines before we turn to our other witnesses. Senator
    Whitehouse.

                 STATEMENT OF HON. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE,
                      A SENATOR FROM RHODE ISLAND

        Senator Whitehouse. Thank you, Chairman. I appreciate you
    allowing me to interrupt the proceedings with a statement. You
    and I have worked together on the FISH Act, which has recently
    passed the Senate by unanimous consent and which I believe has
    the support of the Trump administration, at least the
    Department of State, and which has cleared, in the past, all of
    its House obstacles at one time or another. So I think we're in
    a good place to get it across the finish line at last. It
    addresses the problem of the international pirate fleet, which
    exists in a shadowy world of shell corporations and false
    flags. It is a machine of exploitation, both of common
    resources like international fisheries, and of human beings.
    Many of the pirate fleet vessels qualify as slave ships by any
    rational definition of that term.
        The Chinese fishing fleet has its own set of problems, the
    first of which is that it's not just a fishing fleet. If you
    have any doubts about that, go to the recent New York Times
    article that had an interactive display of the geolocation of
    the Chinese fishing fleet deployed in the Pacific, in the sort
    of South China Sea area. They were spread all over the place,
    and suddenly they all moved to create a strategic line across
    the sea. That was not ordinary fishing behavior. I went to an
    oceans conference in an island nation, and there was a Chinese
    fishing ship anchored, or just offshore--anchored or just
    holding position. It was not engaged in anything that looked
    like fishing behavior, but a lot of diplomats and people had
    come to that place for that conference, and I suspect that this
    vessel was trying to pick up whatever signals they could to
    find out what was going on among the people at that conference.
        So they're not just fishing, and we should be aware of
    that. When they are fishing, they're also a danger because they
    behave horribly with respect to fisheries. We heard about this
    for quite a long time. Mr. Urbina, your work on this has been
    good. Thank you. But particularly it came in a meeting at the
    Munich Security Conference, where the four-star general in
    charge of AFRICOM, without provocation by me, said, One of the
    things we need to do to be more effective in my command is to
    provide resources to our coastal partner nations to help them
    better understand when somebody is fishing illegally in their
    waters, who is fishing illegally in their waters, and maybe
    even give them some resources to go out and challenge the
    illegal fishing in their waters. Because the Chinese fishing
    fleet is going through other nations' economic zones and just
    shredding the fisheries.
        When I used to travel in Asia with Senator McCain, pretty
    much everywhere we stopped that was a coastal nation, when we
    had our major meeting with the head of state and I asked about
    how things were going with the Chinese fishing fleet, their
    heads practically exploded. Everybody had a story about abuses,
    damage, violent behavior, threatening behavior by the Chinese
    fishing fleet. So we have an enormous amount of work to do. The
    recent High Seas Treaty I think is a help. It'd be great if we
    could join that. In the meantime, the FISH Act is going to be
    really important. What it does is encourage investigations and
    sanctions and blacklisting of the bad behavior in these fleets.
    In addition to thanking Senator Sullivan for his partnership on
    the FISH Act, I also want to thank him for bringing us together
    repeatedly with Deputy Secretary of State Landau, who has
    become a convert, having heard from Dan and me about this
    subject, and who I think is increasingly making it a State
    Department priority.
        I'm delighted that these witnesses are here. For far too
    long the pirate fishing fleet and the Chinese fishing fleet
    have been allowed to do untold damage in not only international
    waters, but also in unenforced sovereign waters. The quicker we
    put an end to it, the better off we all will be. My Rhode
    Island fishermen and your Alaska fishermen will be well served
    when the international fisheries are less pressured by illegal
    fishing, leaving more for them to catch under law. Thank you.
        Chair Sullivan. Great. Thank you, Senator Whitehouse. Thank
    you for your leadership and partnership on these issues.
        We'll now return to our expert witnesses. Admiral, the
    floor is yours.

                 STATEMENT OF SCOTT W. CLENDENIN, RADM,
              USCG (RET.), OWNER, DOG ZEBRA SOLUTIONS LLC

        Admiral Clendenin. Well, distinguished members of the
    Commission, I greatly appreciate the invitation to testify on
    this mission, which is just a very deep passion of mine. A lot
    of my comments will affirm the excellent introduction of the
    Commission to this topic.
        Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, IUU fishing,
    is not just a conservation problem alone. It is a national
    security and food security issue that fuels global conflict.
    While other nations have large distant IUU fishing fleets, as
    has been said here, China has by far the largest, and has
    deployed it in a deliberate strategy to dominate the global
    seafood supply. Its distant-water fishing fleets operate in the
    waters of over 90 countries, often with state subsidies. IUU
    fishing fleets practice AIS manipulation and transshipments at
    sea to launder their illegal catch. They take critical fishing
    resources from countries in the Indo-Pacific, West Africa, and
    South America, where their fisheries are critical for their
    needed subsistence. They build dependencies and are responsible
    for human rights abuse at sea through forced labor, as we've
    discussed here.
        Admiral Paparo, Commander INDOPACOM, noted that 8 of the 10
    worst IUU fishing violators in the world are state-owned
    enterprises of the PRC. And they are a real driver of conflict
    in his AOR. China also uses fishing fleets as maritime militia
    in gray zone operations, creating what amounts to regional
    conflict through the proxy of coast guards and fishing fleets.
    Between 2011 and 2024, the Indo-Pacific saw 156 conflicts tied
    to fishing competition, and fisheries-related conflicts have
    increased twentyfold since the 1970s. IUU fishing is a vector
    for other transnational crime, including narcotics smuggling.
        Turning to the U.S. economy--the seafood sector, as has
    been discussed here, is worth over $320 billion and employs 2.3
    million Americans, yet 75 to 85 percent of the seafood consumed
    in America is imported, directly exposing us to IUU-tainted
    supply chains. As the President's recent EO on fisheries
    stated, this is unfair to our very well regulated fishing
    industry, just as was discussed here. Estimates suggest that up
    to one-third of wild-caught seafood consumed in the United
    States is linked to illegal fishing. This is the seafood on
    American dinner tables.
        So what can be done? I recommended three strategic shifts
    that are detailed in my written testimony. I'll be very brief
    here to summarize them. First, we should reinvigorate American
    maritime governance to counter IUU fishing. As a start, this
    issue should be treated with the same seriousness as we treat
    narcotics smuggling and piracy. Congress's MSAFE Act is the
    best U.S. initiative to counter IUU fishing to date. However,
    their work needs to be elevated strategically in importance and
    fully funded. Despite years of effort, they have had minimal
    impact on the tide of IUU fishing globally.
        Second, we need to protect America's maritime interests
    through alliances and trade. Regional fisheries management
    organizations have been forged through diplomatic compromise,
    where any member can block enforcement measures. That needs to
    evolve. We have proven that coordinated international
    operations, broad intelligence sharing, and collective
    diplomatic pressure can change IUU fleet behavior. U.S. trade
    negotiations are a critical instrument as well. All this needs
    to be consistently done at scale.
        Third, we need to strengthen public-private partnerships,
    developing a whole-of-society effort. As an example, in
    collaboration with the seafood industry, we need to improve
    seafood traceability and import controls that require
    documented legal origin for seafood entering U.S. markets. As
    another example, Operation JADE SPEAR showed what is possible
    when law enforcement, Customs, Department of Defense,
    regulatory actions, and the financial sector are combined, and
    resulted in the delisting of IUU-linked companies from NASDAQ.
    However, that was but one operation. To be effective, these
    types of operations must be replicated at scale.
        The opportunity before this Congress is to reframe our
    counter-IUU effort as the strategic national security and food
    security imperative that it is. I look forward to your
    questions.
        [The prepared statement of Admiral Clendenin appears in the
    Appendix.]
        Chair Sullivan. Thank you, Admiral.
        Mr. Pinkert.

                   STATEMENT OF HON. DEAN A. PINKERT,
             SPECIAL ADVISOR, CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY LAB

        Mr. Pinkert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the
    Commission for the opportunity to testify on one of the most
    urgent tasks in U.S. trade enforcement, enhancing efforts to
    address systematic use of forced labor in China's seafood
    industry. As you indicated, Mr. Chairman, I'm a special advisor
    to Corporate Accountability Lab, or CAL, a human rights non-
    profit organization in Chicago. CAL is active in petitioning
    U.S. Customs and Border Protection for forced labor import bans
    under Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930.
        China is the world's largest seafood producer and exporter,
    as was indicated in prior testimony, supplying a substantial
    share of the fish and shellfish reaching American consumers.
    There is a documented state practice of using Uyghur and other
    minority group workers under coercive conditions in Chinese
    seafood production. Goods produced under these conditions enter
    U.S. commerce at a price advantage underwritten by human
    suffering.
        Congress has assembled a flexible toolkit of legislation
    that can be used to address this problem, including Section
    307, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, or UFLPA, Section
    1595a civil penalties, and Section 301 of the Trade Act of
    1974. The issue is not an absence of statutory authority. It is
    the failure to use these tools at scale, in combination, and
    with the creativity the circumstances demand.
        Section 307 prohibits the importation of goods produced in
    whole or in part by forced labor. And the UFLPA creates a
    rebuttable presumption that any goods mined, produced, or
    manufactured in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region or by
    entities on the UFLPA entity list are made with forced labor
    and are therefore inadmissible. These are powerful tools, but
    their effectiveness depends on, first, the U.S. Government's
    ability to trace goods from point of harvest through processing
    to the port of entry; two, the Forced Labor Enforcement Task
    Force's, or FLETF's, ability to maintain a timely cadence of
    placing companies on the entity list; and three, the
    willingness of CBP to move, under Section 307, directly when
    the UFLPA itself does not satisfy enforcement objectives. And I
    believe, Senator Sullivan, that this addresses the point that
    you made in your opening statement that sometimes we've got to
    move over to general enforcement rather than just the UFLPA.
        Chinese seafood supply chains are deliberately opaque. Fish
    caught in distant waters can be transshipped through
    intermediary ports, relabeled, commingled with locally sourced
    product, and reexported to the United States. This can render
    conventional documentation-based compliance less than fully
    effective. CBP should therefore require positive traceability
    documentation, vessel-level catch certificates, processing
    facility records, and chain of custody statements for high-risk
    seafood species and sourcing regions. Importers who cannot
    provide this documentation should simply not be permitted U.S.
    Customs entry of their merchandise.
        Now I mentioned very briefly about the entity list. I just
    want to underscore that the UFLPA entity list should be
    expanded and the FLETF should devote particular attention in
    this regard to Chinese seafood processors, cold chain logistics
    firms, and fishing fleet operators. It's also very important
    that Section 1595a authorizes civil penalties for importations
    made contrary to law. Forced labor importations in violation of
    Section 307 fit precisely into this authorization, yet
    penalties are rarely imposed in the forced labor context, and
    their deterrent potential has largely gone unrealized.
        A robust Section 1595a enforcement program would provide
    two benefits that detentions alone cannot. First, penalties
    impose a financial cost on importers who have not self-policed
    their supply chains and thereby create a direct economic
    incentive for upstream due diligence. Second, penalty
    provisions can generate evidence through CBP's demand for
    importer documentation and the importer's responses,
    documentation revealing supply chain structures otherwise
    hidden from regulators. And I hope, by the way, that we get to
    talk about the new regulations in China that seek to impose
    penalties on just that very kind of investigatory activity
    that's so important.
        Perhaps the most sophisticated challenge in this space is
    the practice of supply chain bifurcation--companies maintaining
    nominally compliant product lines for export to the United
    States while continuing to use state-imposed forced labor in
    lines destined for other markets or sold domestically.
    Compliance, in other words, is purely performative. Section 301
    authorizes the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to investigate
    and respond to foreign acts, policies, or practices that are
    unreasonable or discriminatory and that burden or restrict U.S.
    commerce. A foreign government policy that induces companies to
    simulate compliance while preserving state-
    imposed forced labor in non-U.S.-destined production is exactly
    the kind of state-implicated anticompetitive practice that
    Section 301 was designed to address. In short, it's harmful to
    U.S. producers.
        In conclusion, we have the legal tools to address forced
    labor in seafood supply chains, including where, as in China,
    it is an instrument of state policy. The myriad laws in this
    space are mutually reinforcing. When deployed with strategic
    coordination and resolve, they can impose meaningful costs on
    companies that seek to benefit from this egregious human rights
    violation. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
        [The prepared statement of Dean Pinkert appears in the
    Appendix.]
        Chair Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Pinkert. I want to thank all
    the witnesses again. Excellent testimony. Before we turn to
    questions we have a short video that will be indicative of some
    of the forced labor issues that we wanted to show at this
    hearing. It puts a human face on modern slavery in the Chinese
    fishing fleet.
        (Video presentation begins.)
        Mr. Sahrudin. (Translated.) Conditions onboard were very
    poor. The captain was harsh. I worked hard day and night
    without any break days, and I was treated badly by the captain.
    Even I often got punched. I was even whipped using a mainline,
    the gear to pull the fish. Even worse, every time I got extra
    duty to guard behind the steering wheel, I was often stabbed
    with needles. And the food was not suitable to consume--it was
    like food fed to the ducks.
        My friends have the same fate as me. They were often
    stabbed with needles and slapped. At one point, the workers got
    united and demanded to go home because the bad treatment was
    frequent. The area that was punctured by a needle left a wound
    and got infected to the point of pus coming out and even
    swelling. I found it difficult just to walk.
        We united to demand the captain to send us home. Then the
    captain didn't allow me to go home, nor my colleagues. In the
    end the workers, including me, agreed to go on strike,
    demanding to be sent home. From there I asked the captain again
    for permission to be sent back to Indonesia. Eventually, the
    captain allowed me to go home, one month later.
        (Video presentation ends.)
        Chair Sullivan. Again, just an example of what our
    witnesses testified to, and some of the basic elements of the
    huge problem that we are facing here.
        I want to begin--Mr. Pinkert, I want to get your sense--it
    was very effective testimony--on the authorities that we have.
    And I'm wondering, from your perspective, we've banned the
    importation of Russian seafood--that's through Executive order.
    As I mentioned in my opening statement, the Trump
    administration recently
    reauthorized that Executive order. I've been working on this
    issue for many, many years. We finally got it done. We had a
    lot of American importers who were relying on Russian seafood
    who were fighting this measure. They said this is going to hurt
    them. And what it actually ended up doing, when it finally went
    into effect, is it had a positive impact on American fishermen,
    because they said, Well, I can't afford to not source my fish
    from Russia. And when I had discussions with these guys, I
    said, Well, sure you can. There's a great source. It's called
    American seafood from American fishermen.
        The Chinese and Russians are famous not just for their
    abusive practices, but for dumping seafood into our markets.
    Really, really drove down the price. So the benefit of banning
    the importation of Russian seafood--they tried to launder it
    through China and we nailed that down--was that the importers
    in America started to say, Well, I guess I should get it from
    the Alaskans, who are catching freedom fish sustainably. So
    it's actually really benefited our fishermen across the
    country. So I have two questions related to that experience.
    One, just a warning, right? If you're an American importer of a
    lot of Chinese seafood and you're watching this hearing, I
    would start kind of looking at new supply chains because I
    think your days are numbered. Because the goal here is to ban
    the importation of Chinese seafood under the laws that you
    currently say exist in the authority.
        But I think our CBP officials are getting better at the
    issue of traceability because of all the good work they've done
    on implementing the ban on Russian seafood, and then the
    laundered Russian seafood through China. They're getting quite
    good. But my question to you is, Do you think--under current
    law, all the laws that you mentioned--should we be looking to
    implement a ban, not just the bill that I got passed in the
    NDAA, which is banning the importation of Chinese seafood for
    military commissaries and military dining facilities, but a
    comprehensive ban on Chinese seafood?
        Do you think that, given current practices, given what you
    know, given what others have testified to and have provided
    evidence of, whether it's the Section 307, the UFLPA, Section
    301, is there enough evidence and authority for a comprehensive
    ban on Chinese seafood into the United States under current
    law? Do you think we meet that standard? And do you think that
    CBP is gaining the ability--I know the traceability issues are
    challenging--but do you think the CBP is gaining the ability to
    implement such a ban, since they are currently doing it with
    Russia, and they're doing it quite effectively? And maybe I'll
    pose that to you first, but I think I can pose that question to
    all the witnesses.
        Mr. Pinkert. Thank you, Senator, for that question. I would
    start by saying I agree with you that the capabilities have
    improved dramatically just in the past two years, two and a
    half years, when I've been watching it very, very carefully.
    Having said that, I think that the answer, and I kind of
    touched on your question in the testimony, the more aggressive
    use of Withhold Release Orders by CBP, including regional
    Withhold Release Orders, I think would go a long way toward
    addressing the concerns that you're expressing. I think that
    it's one thing to say we have the Uyghur Forced Labor
    Prevention Act, and that has very specific triggers, and
    there's a rebuttable presumption, as you know, under the UFLPA.
    But more generally, can we use the Section 307 process to do
    regional Withhold Release Orders in a way that doesn't hinge
    specifically on the use of Uyghur forced labor?
        Chair Sullivan. Okay. Good.
        Admiral, do you have a view on this?
        Admiral Clendenin. Yes, sir. I think, more strategically--I
    was a co-chair in the early days of the MSAFE with my NOAA and
    State Department colleagues--every time we had public comment,
    traceability was one of the number one issues and suggestions
    that came up. I think----
        Chair Sullivan. As a way to not take action, or what?
        Admiral Clendenin. No. Traceability had to be pursued and
    had to be implemented and had to be part of our customs
    procedures. Our interagency partners at that point were not
    very aggressive with that, as far as seafood, and now it looks
    like they are forming around that.
        Chair Sullivan. I think they're getting much better, right?
        Admiral Clendenin. They're getting much better.
        Chair Sullivan. The ban on Russian seafood has been
    comprehensive and not always easy to enforce, but I think
    they're actually doing a really good job.
        Admiral Clendenin. Yes, sir. And it does take resources,
    obviously, to make sure they have those, and it requires
    consistency across the board. So I think if you read public
    opinion right now, there's still room to improve there, but I
    think we're moving in the right direction with that. I think
    we've done a good job on the southern border. I think as we
    look at the importation of things like this into the Nation,
    there's some things that we can do to do better on that front.
        Chair Sullivan. So let me ask, Mr. Urbina, your testimony--
    you have expertise. How do you think we are doing? I want to
    have, in some ways, a followup on the great work you've done
    previously on the forced labor on ships and processing
    facilities. And then, to your testimony today, if there is a
    rebuttable presumption under the UFLPA on forced labor in
    certain parts of China, and you are going to publish something
    here very soon that shows there's enormous amounts of
    aquaculture going on in this part of China--which, as your
    testimony reveals, kind of makes no sense, right? You're not
    near an ocean. They're doing it probably because of the labor
    costs of using slave labor.
        So do you think that that's going to highlight again the
    potential to ban any aquaculture from China, given how much
    they produce in the Xinjiang province and other areas? And then
    if you want to comment with an update on where you think we
    have been from your previous excellent reporting, and what the
    law, from your perspective, demands that we do, given that
    there is a lot of slave labor, forced labor, going on in the
    seafood supply chain directly from China?
        Mr. Urbina. I think, on your first question about a China-
    wide ban, I don't have an answer, but I do have a restatement
    of the question, in the sense that the UFLPA is a fairly
    circumscribed and effective tool. But there's also law that
    clearly says products tied to forced labor in general should
    not be coming into the U.S. And yet we have a place that
    produces a lot of products where that law is unenforceable
    because it's so opaque and impenetrable. To me, that's the
    simplification of the point you're making. If we have a law but
    we can't enforce it vis-a-vis any products coming from one
    certain place because it's a black box, we can't do real
    audits, we can't check on the truthfulness of papers coming
    from that place, then there needs to be some strong action to
    fix that so that we can ensure the forced labor law that's in
    general is enforceable.
        How you do that is your job, but I think it needs to be
    much wider. I do think the genius in UFLPA is the element of
    rebuttable presumption, which shifts the burden off of the
    likes of us, and even you, and puts it back on those who are
    making money from this Faustian bargain. And says if you want
    to do business there, you need to prove that it is legal. We
    don't have to prove that it's illegal. So to me, that's a
    formula for moving forward.
        To your second question, how are things going--you know,
    Dean has the best view. He's down in the weeds and watching
    these cases. My kind of high-altitude, removed view of how
    things are going in the last couple of years is there was a lot
    of action from you folks in Congress, thankfully. And executive
    departments sat up and took notice. There was a lot less action
    from within the industry in terms of solving [this]. And many
    of the key players we identified as relying on North Korean or
    Uyghur labor changed their name and kept their address, and
    suddenly they were not on the list anymore.
        This sort of gimmickry is a very simple solution to get
    around the tools we have. And we did document that happening
    right after the reporting. But I do agree with you that Customs
    and Border and other agencies began figuring out how they need
    to take this more seriously, and try to staff up to enforce
    those tools better.
        Chair Sullivan. Mr. Chairman.
        Co-chair Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        Let me just ask a couple of questions. In 1992, Frank Wolf,
    Scott Flipse--our chief of staff who's behind me here--and I
    visited China. We went to Beijing Prison No. 1, where Tiananmen
    Square activists had been--unfortunately, about 40 of them were
    still there, incarcerated under slave-like conditions. And we
    were there in large part to focus on forced labor. The fact
    that the Laogai was producing unbelievably large numbers of
    products that were at all of our stores, K-mart, you name the
    place, you would find it. If you traced it back, you would all
    of a sudden say, Oh my God, it was made by an activist or
    religious freedom prisoner, prisoner of conscience. And totally
    against Smoot-Hawley, totally against our laws.
        And Clinton pushed this idea, because I held a whole series
    of hearings on it--a whole series of hearings, that we had an
    MOU with China. So I looked at it carefully, asked a lot of
    hard questions, met with our people in the Beijing embassy, who
    were part of the enforcement. And they were like the Maytag
    repairman. Remember that old commercial? They have no work to
    do because they just had no work to do. It was so flawed as an
    agreement. We would tell them when we suspected something, and
    then they would investigate and get back to us within about 60
    days. We had trouble getting visas for people to go and
    investigate.
        So we actually had proof. We got socks, jelly shoes. Scott
    actually put some of those socks in his back pocket. We went to
    Customs, and they put an import ban on anything coming out of
    that, because we had actionable information. But other than
    that, the MOU was an absolute farce. The whole idea of proof of
    origin, and trying to determine that, has been a vexing
    problem. And rebuttable presumption has helped, to a large
    extent, but not fully, to at least shift that paradigm in our
    favor, and in the favor of exploited workforces.
        We've had hearings in this Commission, as the Chairman
    knows, where we focused on the fact that the so-called
    investigators for our big corporations were denied access when
    they went. They come back and they say, See, it's all good--we
    got a certification. So we asked the hard questions. In one
    case they interviewed people who told them, with the communist
    minders sitting right there, the secret police, you know, What
    is going on? You think you're going to say they don't have
    bargaining rights--but there's not any kind of protection for
    workers. So my point is that origin, the exploitation of the
    workforce, we kid ourselves if we think, absent the FISH Act
    and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, very aggressively
    implemented, will ever stop Xi Jinping from dumping all of
    these slave-made goods on our shores.
        So I would ask you again, it's been a problem. The MOU
    was--and they would come up, they being the Clinton leaders,
    Assistant Secretary for Human Rights and Democracy and Labor
    and others--and say, We've got this MOU. And I said, Doesn't
    work. Quit using that as a false defense for your lack of due
    diligence to try to stop this. And I think we're now dealing
    with it. And when the Chairman's bill becomes law, and I do
    believe it will become law, it will be the biggest game changer
    on this issue ever. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is
    important. It had problems with de minimis, you know, numbers,
    although that's been reduced. They were gaming that big time,
    they being the Chinese Communist Party. And there's always a
    problem of suggesting it's coming from somewhere else.
        I would point out that the video we just watched and the
    lawsuit against Bumble Bee is being undertaken pursuant to my
    law, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which awaits
    fuller implementation even as we meet, but at least--and the
    judge--Judge Bashant, has denied Bumble Bee's motion to
    dismiss. And that was good. She's a district judge. And
    hopefully that will proceed. I mean, exploiting people in plain
    sight. So certification procedures, we've got to do a better
    job on that. The law will be there, I think, on the fish.
        There's also the issue of farmed fish, and concerns about
    how healthy farmed fish are. I did not know until you just said
    it that there's four times the number of farmed fish as they
    catch. I mean, that's a frightening statistic because it breeds
    sickness and a lot of other things that are underappreciated by
    so many. So I would ask you maybe to elaborate on that. We've
    got tools. We need more tools. And I can't say enough--and I
    hope the people in Alaska, the people of New Jersey, the people
    in Rhode Island, and all the other places where fish are so
    important, realize--that this historic bill, soon to become
    law, by the Chairman, is the game changer.
        Because, as you pointed out, Admiral, there's concerns that
    the AFRICOM general pointed out as well--the commander--that
    we're dealing with a nefarious fleet for other reasons too, not
    only the way they're exploiting workers and undercutting
    anything that even comes close to free and fair trade, and
    completely violative of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
    But this law will make all the difference in the world.
        Ian, if you want to--and, again, I can't thank you enough
    for what you have done. I mean, when we met before The New
    Yorker article came out, you briefed our whole staff about how
    important it was, and we coincided our hearing to try to
    amplify the message of what you and your investigators have
    done. Again, you're the great journalist, and [Chair Sullivan],
    you're the great lawmaker who made all the difference on this
    issue. And I can't thank you enough.
        Ian.
        Mr. Urbina. Thank you. I would just touch on the TVPA and
    its importance, and also the importance of what's happening
    with that Bumble Bee case. It's a bit in the weeds, but the
    judge rejected the argument by the company in that case that
    the company was not liable for what happened to that guy that
    you saw because of the sort of shell-game nature of how
    globalized product handoff happens now, that that company
    couldn't possibly know what was going on on the ship and
    therefore that company shouldn't be held responsible for it.
    This is the sort of fundamental playbook maneuver of modern
    litigation when it comes to these cases, and it's problematic
    beyond seafood.
        And the judge in that case said, You know, you were
    certified and participant in a shared program, and therefore
    you're clearly connected with what was coming off of that ship
    and what was going on on the ship. Therefore, I'm not going to
    allow that argument to fly. This is important precedent and
    should be watched very closely to see if that holds, because it
    will be the first big step toward, A, making TVPA, your
    legislation, more enforceable, and connecting the entities that
    are really getting wealthy off of the forced labor that's way
    down the supply chain, and ensuring that these supply chains
    have accountability and responsibility all the way up to the
    ones who really care the most, which are the branded, profiting
    institutions. So I would only say that the law is very
    important, but the way it's being gamed in the courts is also
    really important. And that case could be a boon for better
    enforcement going forward.
        Co-chair Smith. Thank you.
        Chair Sullivan. Senator Kim.
        Senator Kim. Yes, thank you, Senator. Thank you,
    Congressman, for your leadership on this.
        I only have a couple minutes here before I have to run for
    votes, but I wanted to ask Mr. Urbina--I wanted to start with
    you. I mean, what you talked about in terms of the growth of
    the aquaculture industry in Xinjiang and in Tibet. I mean, it's
    very alarming. And I wanted to just get a little bit more sense
    from you just what you see as motivating this. I mean, is it
    driven primarily by just the low cost of the forced labor, or
    are there other political considerations, or other things of
    that nature?
        Mr. Urbina. It's a great question. It's not driven by a
    desire to cash in on forced labor. It's driven by a larger
    state-building agenda by the Chinese government. Very wise.
    Very Chinese. It's one part--look, there are 68,000 fish farms
    on the east coast of China. There are 1,200 in western
    landlocked Tibet and Xinjiang. So it's a small percentage. It's
    also the fastest growing. It's a half billion dollars of export
    coming out of that region. And in the last two years, it's
    grown by 16 percent, more than anywhere else in the country. So
    while it's small, it's cutting edge. It's the tip of the spear.
    And it has a lot to do with two big motivations. One is, China
    needs to settle that inland west. It's a restive, challenging
    population, to put it diplomatically. And China wants to
    consolidate it, to control it, so pushing more and more
    industry in there--hydroelectric, solar, tomatoes, cotton, fish
    farms--is one way to settle it. That's part of the big agenda.
    The other agenda is China put 30 percent of its aquaculture
    along its--well, 30 percent of its eastern coast is taken up by
    aquaculture. Extremely polluting and extremely overfished. So
    those waters have plummeted. So they need to figure out how to
    decrease the pressure--of what their industry is doing on their
    own coasts. How? Move inland. Where? Move to depopulated
    inland. Where's that? Far west.
        Third, there's a great PR story of Chinese state-led
    ingenuity that it's eager to push--Look at what we've done with
    solar, look at what we're doing on climate. All commendable and
    impressive, but also part of the China PR program to show that
    Xinjiang isn't a human rights story, it's an innovation story,
    it's an engineering story. Growing fish in the desert is a
    great engineering story, right? And so they're pushing that on
    social media. These are the big reasons they're pushing inland.
        Senator Kim. And you're testifying here saying that some of
    the seafood is reaching the United States, you know, reaching
    public institutions. Where is the biggest enforcement failure
    here? Is it the importer due diligence? Is it customs
    screenings? And what is it that we can do better to try to
    verify--you know, to be able to push back on this and be able
    to have credible ways for certification bodies to be able to
    verify the labor and sustainability claims from that region?
        Mr. Urbina. Sorry to do this to Dean again, but the nuts
    and bolts of how UFLPA works, how Withhold Release Orders work,
    are super important here. Oftentimes it's how slow it is, the
    bar of evidentiary standard for getting a company added. These
    are some of the biggest reasons that those two tools alone
    aren't more effective. I think that's one place. Funding, staff
    levels, how the law is being interpreted, and how recent the
    testimony has to be, what level of proof is required for forced
    labor. UFLPA, luckily, you don't need that. If you're from
    Xinjiang, it's proven. But for other places, on ships, very
    tough. These are the things that are boring, but also super
    consequential in how effective it can be.
        I think the biggest issues are the ones that I focus on,
    which are putting the responsibility less on your shoulders,
    and less on Customs and Border, and the executive, and putting
    it back more on industry due diligence and having them prove
    that it's not happening. They're the ones that are making the
    money off of it. They should also have the burden. They also
    are in command of their own supply chains. We have to fight
    and, you know, go out to sea and do all sorts of crazy things
    to figure out their supply chains. They're sitting on the data.
    And if they wanted to police their own supply chains, if they
    were forced to, they could. But right now, they don't have to.
        And China makes it especially easy, because they can throw
    up their hands and say, Well, it's certified by Best
    Aquaculture Practices or whomever. So we think that's pretty
    good. But if you ask them, does anyone actually--what does that
    mean? They say, Well, you should ask them, and we do the best
    we can in China. Those are the places where I think the biggest
    fixes have to happen. And putting pressure on industry to fix
    that and requiring them to do so is probably the biggest thing
    that you folks could do.
        Senator Kim. Well, thanks for shining a light on this. And
    for the three of you, just the incredibly important information
    that we have. I hope we can take real action here to be able to
    step up and stop some of the most nefarious aspects of this and
    be able to get things better for our fishermen in New Jersey
    and elsewhere. So thanks so much for putting this together.
    Thank you.
        Chair Sullivan. Thank you, Senator Kim.
        I'm going to go to round two here. We do have a vote, so
    we're going to keep this kind of quick, but I want to begin.
    Admiral, your testimony--I wanted to ask two questions. You
    testified that MSAFE created a framework but is under resourced
    and under-
    utilized. Where do you think the principal breakdown in that is
    with regard to MSAFE funding, interagency coordination,
    operational capacity?
        And then, related to that--we're hoping to get my FISH Act
    over the goal line here soon, and that does have a big role for
    our great men and women in the Coast Guard. I chair the Coast
    Guard Subcommittee in the Commerce Committee. What kind of
    specific
    resources do you think we need to make the Coast Guard more
    efficient at meeting IUU fishing interdiction goals? You may
    have seen in the Working Families Tax Cuts Act last year, we
    made the biggest investment in the Coast Guard in American
    history, $25 billion. Huge. Twenty-two new cutters, 16 new
    icebreakers, 40 new H-60 helos. I mean, we are investing
    massively in the Coast Guard. Are there other Coast Guard-
    related priorities that can help on the IUU fishing front? So
    two questions for you.
        Admiral Clendenin. Well, thank you very much for those
    questions, Senator. They're very important. On the MSAFE,
    again, it's a very laudable effort. It's the only of its kind
    and it brings together departments and agencies in a very
    unique way. We've talked about the complexity, and it's outside
    the Coast Guard wheelhouse, but of customs enforcement and
    traceability. You look at a JADE SPEAR-type investigation, it
    involved many departments and agencies. And that requires very,
    very detailed and intricate work between the departments and
    agencies.
        As I compare the MSAFE to other work that I've done at the
    national level, when I think about some of the efforts I had at
    the National Security Council, and we were working on a
    strategy in Central America that was routinely briefed at the
    cabinet level, and then I also had the opportunity to work
    transnational organized crime in the strategic division that
    was also briefed at the cabinet level, I look at an incredible
    opportunity here. With your FISH Act, with the MSAFE that's
    already established, with the president's EO that addresses
    having to get after importation of IUU fishing, it connects us
    to both the executive branch and the legislative branch, and
    resources can be brought to the table.
        The one thing I would say is, when we work in the MSAFE, we
    can't just be cataloging everything that we're already doing.
    Those efforts have to focus on what needs to be done, and that
    sometimes involves changing what agencies are doing, changing
    their emphasis, and funding additional lines of effort, and
    that's hard work. So having to routinely report to Congress and
    the executive branch on how to get ahead, using the MSAFE and
    all these, this is the time to do it. I think this is the time
    to rejuvenate all the efforts against IUU.
        Chair Sullivan. Great.
        I'm going to ask a final question of Mr. Pinkert and Mr.
    Urbina. They're related, but you might have different angles on
    it. But it's essentially, if we wanted to have measurable--
    either from Congress or the executive branch--results in this
    area in the next 12 months, where would you focus the efforts?
    Tougher import enforcement? Stronger procurement bans? Pressure
    on certifiers? Exposure of brands using these supply chains and
    slave labor? Entity list designations? Hopefully, my bill is
    going to have the sanctions list component to it when it
    becomes law. A Section 301 investigation?
        Where would you--and maybe it's not one to just prioritize,
    but to get action and, to be honest, to get publicity on the
    importance of this--which all of you have done a really good
    job at, what would you think in the next 12 months the most
    effective, impactful
    action is that we, either in Congress or the executive branch,
    could take? We've been working with USTR. They're looking at a
    301 investigation. I think they're already undertaking part of
    the investigation aspect. So I think we're pushing on an open
    door with this administration on a lot of this. But I'm just
    curious, from your expertise, where would you prioritize
    efforts? Why don't we start with you, Mr. Pinkert.
        Mr. Pinkert. Thank you. I would note that the Seafood
    Competitiveness Executive Order specifically talked about using
    Section 301. I would just add that, of course, this bifurcation
    of supply chains issue is a really, really critical aspect of
    that. And they should really be looking into that. As far as
    other things, you mentioned the entity list. And I think we
    need to kind of set the scene for the difficulties that have
    occurred in the last year or so with the entity list, and the
    fact that there's just not much movement in that area. This is
    an interagency group, seven agencies, and some observer
    agencies as well, and it's chaired by the DHS. And there's been
    a lot of turnover among staff. There's been a lot of turnover
    among the political appointees that are charged with keeping
    this program going and keeping it robust. And quite frankly, we
    don't know what the priority is in terms of having robust
    additions to the entity list. So I think that--you know, Ian
    talked a lot about the problem of labor transfers within China.
    And in fact, one of his former colleagues, Daniel Murphy, has
    also written quite a bit about that. In order to really address
    labor transfers, we have to get the entity list up and moving,
    and moving forward.
        And then finally, civil penalties. That's a totally--I
    don't want to say totally neglected, but mostly neglected, area
    of authority. You've got to make companies pay. Ian talked
    about the TVPA and the venture liability under the TVPA. These
    companies are in a venture making money off of forced labor, in
    many instances. And we need to make them accountable, not just
    in terms of shaming but also financial penalties. Thank you.
        Chair Sullivan. Great.
        Mr. Urbina, I'll give you the last word, and then I'm going
    to turn it over to Chairman Smith to wrap up the hearing. I am
    being called by the cloakroom to get down and vote, but I want
    to hear your final answer. You have a lot of views on this, I'm
    sure, and I want to hear them.
        Mr. Urbina. I'll be very brief. I think what Dean said is
    100 percent correct. It's a sort of bottom-up strategy. I think
    a top-down strategy would be--the civil penalties point is
    akin--focusing on the certification industry, and also on the
    largest single corporate players, be they grocers or seafood
    companies, that the U.S. Government relies on to provide its
    seafood in lots of different places. And figuring out to what
    degree those players alone, through purchasing policy, can be
    pressured to change how well they police their supply chains by
    way of demands from you folks. If you want access to this
    market, then you've got to change your approach to verifying to
    us that you're not tied to these regions. I think that will
    affect the marketplace globally and have trickle-down effects
    that are more efficient than legislation sometimes.
        Chair Sullivan. Great.
        Well, listen, I want to thank the witnesses. I'm going to
    turn it over to Chairman Smith here. Excellent testimony. As we
    wrap up, if other members of the Commission have additional
    questions, they will submit them for the record. If you can try
    to get answers back to those other members in the next two
    weeks, we'll leave the hearing record open. But again, I want
    to thank the outstanding witnesses, all three of you. The
    importance of this hearing--I think it's gaining steam in the
    executive branch and in Congress, in a bipartisan way. I think
    that's really positive. Your work, all three of you, has been
    exceptional, and we really appreciate it.
        Mr. Chairman, I'm going to turn it over to you. Thank you,
    sir. We will be in touch.
        Co-chair Smith. Thank you. I want to thank Chairman
    Sullivan. Yes, to underscore, we have a vote now over on the
    House side, so I'm going to have to leave momentarily.
        I want to thank you for your testimony, for your guidance,
    your wisdom, counsel, breakthrough work. But just to underscore
    how historic and how difficult it is to get anything passed of
    this caliber, I've had the Forced Organ Harvesting Act pass 406
    to 1 in the House. It has passed in the last Congress, passed
    in this one. I can't get it passed in the Senate. I mean, it's
    an abomination what Xi Jinping is doing to the Uyghurs, to the
    Falun Gong, and to others. You know, tens of thousands of young
    people, average age 28, having their organs ripped out--you
    know, killed.
        My first hearing on forced organ harvesting was 30 years
    ago in 1996. I had a doctor who actually testified as to
    exactly what they were doing. It was low-level exploitation and
    human rights abuse then in terms of numbers, but now it's
    industrial size. And I can't get the bill out of the Senate. So
    I want you to know how important and precedent-setting it is
    for the Chairman to have gotten his bill--the FISH Act--passed
    in the Senate. It was a brilliant
    maneuver on his part. He got it. And it will pass in the House,
    I guarantee it. So I just--you know, I hope people realize
    that. Otherwise, we'd have another great bill sitting and
    languishing in committee that never moves. But now we have a
    really good, solid, actionable piece of legislation that he has
    authored.
        I know that there are some 30 entity list proposals that
    have not gone forward. I'm not sure if any of them deal with
    seafood. Maybe, Mr. Pinkert, you might know. Part of the answer
    just a moment ago was that there's been a lot of change of
    personnel and the like, but we need to get a more laser-like
    focus on doing just that. And implementation, implementation,
    implementation. And when this bill becomes law, and the FISH
    Act similarly, implementation, implementation, implementation.
        I have to run--but I can't thank you enough. I mean, you
    have done breakthrough work, all three of you. And the Chairman
    has done, I think, the biggest heavy lift imaginable to get the
    FISH Act passed in the U.S. Senate. I do have a vote, so I'm
    going to have to leave. The hearing is adjourned, and I thank
    you.
        [Whereupon, at 11:36 a.m., the hearing ended.]

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                             A  P  P  E  N  D  I  X

    =======================================================================

                              Prepared Statements

                                     ______

                        Prepared Statement of Ian Urbina

                    The Outlaw Ocean Project Investigation:
                China's Forced Labor in the Aquaculture Industry

        Thank you, Chair Sullivan and Co-chair Smith, and the rest of the
    Commission, for inviting me to speak. It's an honor to be back before
    you.
        The last time I was here was in 2023, when the Commission asked me
    to testify about an investigation by my news team, The Outlaw Ocean
    Project, into China's role in global seafood. That reporting focused on
    China's more than 6,500 industrial fishing vessels and its hundreds of
    processing plants. It documented debt bondage, passport confiscation,
    avoidable deaths, fatal beatings, trafficked workers, illegal fishing,
    and a state-coordinated program forcing thousands of workers from
    Xinjiang and North Korea into seafood processing factories. Much of the
    product from those factories was bound for the United States, including
    American military bases and congressional cafeterias, in violation of
    the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and the Countering America's
    Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. In the wake of that reporting,
    Congress, the executive branch, and a small handful of seafood
    companies took action.
        I'm here today to discuss our current investigation, which will be
    published in the coming weeks and examines the global aquaculture
    industry, including China's role in it.
        By way of context: seafood is the world's most heavily traded food
    commodity by value, and aquaculture, or fish farming, is the industry's
    fastest-growing sector. As of 2022, more than half of all seafood
    worldwide was farmed rather than caught at sea.
        This growth has been driven in part by a marketing claim: that fish
    farming is sustainable because it reduces pressure on wild fisheries.
    The problem is that for much of the industry, that claim is false.
    Roughly two-thirds of global aquaculture depends on feed made from
    wild-caught fish, in the form of fishmeal and fish oil. Think of the
    seafood people eat most: salmon, shrimp, tilapia, and sea bream. In
    other words, many farmed fish are fed the very wild fish the industry
    claims it is helping to spare.
        Not all aquaculture works this way. Roughly a third of global fish
    farming focuses on non-fed species such as clams, oysters, and mussels.
    That form of aquaculture can indeed be sustainable.
        But most fish farming depends on feed fish. And our investigation
    found that this segment of the industry prefers to begin the story of
    sustainability and ethical sourcing at the farm. If you start the story
    earlier, with the feed, a very different picture emerges.
        Our recent investigation, called ``Food for Feed,'' did just that.
    Over the past two years, we mapped and reported on roughly 1,400
    fishmeal plants worldwide, boarded and inspected ships supplying them,
    traced the farms to which the feed goes, and tracked the resulting
    seafood to document the hidden costs.
        In Russia's Far East, we documented forced labor on ships, farms,
    and in factories. In Western Sahara, we found the industry helping prop
    up Morocco's military occupation. In Gambia and Mauritania we found
    fish that once fed local communities increasingly diverted into
    fishmeal factories for export, worsening food insecurity. In countries
    including India and Peru, the industry was tied to at least 80
    incidents of civil unrest, some violent, often labor strikes and
    community protests over polluted water or the stench from factories
    cooking thousands of tons of decomposing fish. In Senegal, fishmeal has
    pushed local fishers out of work, so that many are selling or
    repurposing their boats to flee to Europe, usually by making the
    roughly 930-mile journey to Spain's Canary Islands, a route that
    claimed more than 3,000 lives in 2025.
        These are what economists call externalities: costs pushed onto
    distant countries and communities, while wealthier consumers enjoy the
    luxury seafood produced as a result.
        So what does this have to do with China? China is the largest
    producer, exporter, and consumer of seafood in the world. It is also
    the single biggest exporter of seafood to the United States. And it is
    rapidly expanding fish farming, so it does not have to send as many
    vessels onto the high seas or into foreign waters. China now grows
    about four times as much fish as it catches, and huge quantities of
    that farmed seafood are exported, including to the United States.
        What is striking is where much of this expansion is happening:
    Xinjiang and Tibet. Fish farming typically takes place along coasts, in
    near-shore cages or pens. But China is expanding it in mountainous and
    desert regions that are among the most landlocked places on Earth.
        Our investigation mapped the supply chains of more than 1,200 fish
    farms in Xinjiang and Tibet. We found seafood from these farms going to
    a dozen countries, including the United States, and to companies
    supplying public institutions such as military bases, public schools,
    and congressional cafeterias. Not only is that a violation of the
    Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, but some of these farms in Xinjiang
    are certified as sustainable by U.S.-based programs such as Best
    Aquaculture Practices, which seems mystifying in light of U.S. law.
        I do not need to remind this Commission that Tibet and Xinjiang are
    among the most repressive regions in China. In Tibet, the government
    has relocated roughly half a million people, leveling villages and
    monasteries for projects including hydroelectric dams and fish farms.
    According to a 2024 Human Rights Watch report, this effort has relied
    on coercive tactics including repeated home visits, threats of
    prosecution, and warnings that utilities could be cut off for those who
    refused to move. In response to such policies, at least 169 Tibetans
    have set themselves on fire, often on camera, outside police stations,
    monasteries, or public squares. In Xinjiang, more than a million people
    have been held in detention camps, while the government has carried out
    large-scale land seizures, forced sterilizations, and criminal
    penalties for speaking native languages or practicing religious and
    cultural traditions.
        That seafood from these regions is still reaching the United States
    shows how much work remains. American seafood producers, grocers, and
    food-service companies such as Sysco continue to rely on certification
    schemes that claim to police sustainability and forced labor in places
    like China, where spot checks at factories, ships, or farms are
    effectively impossible. China is also a place where asking tough
    questions about Uyghurs, Tibetans, or human rights generally, can get a
    company, civil society group, or journalist expelled. Yet the cost
    savings are so enticing that industry and certifiers continue to make
    that Faustian bargain.
        Let's be clear: repression in these regions is one of China's
    hidden costs. It is the externality that helps produce cheap seafood.
    It is part of China's competitive advantage and helps explain the trade
    surplus in this commodity.
        The UFLPA was enacted partly to level that playing field. So were
    tools like the Global Magnitsky Act. Customs and Border Protection has
    used Withhold Release Orders to stop imports suspected of being tied to
    forced labor. Congress has pressed companies through letters and
    hearings like this one, tightened purchasing rules for federally funded
    institutions, and, in rare cases, forced companies to do due diligence,
    putting the burden on industry, rather than journalists or civil
    society, to prove that supply chains are free of illegal or unethical
    hidden costs.
        Bottom line: The tools exist. The question now is whether they'll
    get used.
        Thank you for your time today.

         Prepared Statement of Rear Admiral (Ret.) Scott W. Clendenin,
                          United States Coast Guard *

                                     ______

    * Strategic Advisor to the report The Geopolitics of the Ocean--Why
    Healthy Seas Are Vital to America's National Security (World Wildlife
    Fund, 2025)

    I. Opening Statement

        Distinguished Members of the Commission: thank you for the
    opportunity to testify. My name is Scott Clendenin. I am a retired Rear
    Admiral from the United States Coast Guard, where I last served as
    Assistant Commandant for Response Policy. I am here in my personal
    capacity today, but also as a Senior Advisor to the recently published
    World Wildlife Fund's and International Conservation Caucus
    Foundation's report The Geopolitics of the Ocean: Why Healthy Seas Are
    Vital to America's National Security. It brings together data,
    analysis, and first-hand perspectives from five former senior national
    security officials--including two U.S. Ambassadors, a former Acting
    National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Administrator,
    and the 26th Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard--all of whom have
    served the Nation in high-level leadership positions for decades.
        It is important to note up front that my opinions and views
    expressed in my testimony are my own and in no way reflect the official
    position of the U.S. Government, U.S. Coast Guard, the World Wildlife
    Fund, or any other organizations.
        I want to be direct with this congressional commission--Illegal,
    Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing is much more than a fisheries
    management or conservation problem. IUU Fishing is a national security
    crisis that fuels conflict and transnational organized crime; it
    finances cartels; enables arms and drug smuggling; is intertwined with
    human trafficking and forced labor; undermines the sovereignty of our
    allies while directly defrauding American consumers, and creates an
    unfair playing field for U.S. domestic fishermen who have to compete
    with illegally caught fish on the market.
        The principal driver of IUU Fishing is the People's Republic of
    China (PRC). Beijing has for decades conceived of and deployed a
    strategy to access, lay claim to, and dominate the global supply of
    seafood in order to exercise power around the world, including through
    gray-zone operations where its global fishing fleet is leveraged as a
    maritime militia. Beijing has used policy incentives, economic
    subsidies, and political encouragement for its distant-water fishing
    fleet to fan out over the world to further the PRC's natural resources
    and geopolitical interests. As Admiral Samuel Paparo, Commander, U.S.
    Indo-Pacific Command, has stated: ``Eight of the 10 world's worst IUU
    fishing violators are state-owned enterprises of the People's Republic
    of China . . . it has the potential to be a real driver of conflict.''
    In short, our nation's action on IUU Fishing could determine whether we
    experience peace or conflict, security or instability, prosperity or
    economic challenges.
        To that end, I am here to reaffirm that America is a maritime
    nation and that the ocean underpins our economic strength, our food
    supply chains, our strategic influence, and our homeland security. I am
    also here to urge our Nation's elected officials to treat the
    governance of the ocean--and the enforcement against those who prey
    upon it--with the same strategic imperative that we bring to piracy,
    narcotics smuggling, energy security, rare earth minerals, and
    strategic competition with our adversaries.

    II. IUU Fishing Is a National Security Challenge

        Let me begin with the scope of the problem. Under my tenure in the
    U.S. Coast Guard, we declared IUU Fishing to be the world's top
    maritime security challenge--surpassing piracy. The financial losses
    from IUU Fishing are estimated at 16 to 36 billion dollars annually.
    Estimates indicate that potentially up to one third of wild-caught
    seafood consumed in the United States is linked to illegal fishing.
    That is seafood on American dinner tables, in American restaurants, and
    in American grocery stores--caught illegally, often by forced labor,
    processed in opaque supply chains, and sold at a price advantage over
    the American fishermen who play by the rules. President Trump in his
    recent Executive orders on Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness
    and Unleashing American Commercial Fishing in the Pacific addressed
    this issue of fundamental fairness for our American fishermen. I agree
    with this assessment, and we need to meet this moment because this
    issue goes beyond economic unfairness to our domestic industry--it is a
    direct subsidy to criminal networks.
        Many sources and initiatives document how IUU Fishing is a driver
    of conflict and deeply intertwined with the most dangerous
    transnational threats America faces. For example:

          In the Indo-Pacific: China's distant-water fishing fleets
    dominate the maritime domain. Between 2011 to 2024, the region
    experienced 156 conflict events in the Pacific Islands in what amounts
    to regional conflict through the proxy of coast guards and fishing
    fleets. Now the tuna stocks are shifting eastward due to warming
    waters, a trend likely to spark escalated conflicts.

          There are strong indications that distant-water fishing
    fleets are involved in drug smuggling and other transnational crimes in
    our hemisphere. In 2018 two Chinese nationals were convicted in U.S.
    Federal District Court of narcotics smuggling following a U.S. Coast
    Guard Cutter interdiction of their fishing vessel with 900 kilos of
    cocaine on the high seas in the Eastern Pacific.

          In 2023, the U.S. Navy seized over 2,000 AK-47 assault
    rifles from a Yemeni-crewed fishing vessel in the Gulf, demonstrating
    how traditional fishing craft are used to arm Iranian-funded proxies.
    These same types of fishing vessels are smuggling other illicit cargoes
    across Middle East waterways, serving to
    destabilize the region.

          Drug cartels--including Mexico's Gulf Cartel, a
    designated foreign terrorist organization--use fishing vessels to
    conduct drug and migrant smuggling operations along our southern
    maritime border. They also harvest red snapper and other commercially
    valuable species from U.S. waters, violating American sovereignty,
    stealing our natural resources, and exporting them back to the U.S.
    market for millions of dollars in cartel revenue.

          In the Gulf of California, the Sinaloa Cartel and Cartel
    Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) have systematically taken over the
    fishing industry--from individual fishermen, to cooperatives, to
    processing plants, and to exporters. The entire seafood value chains in
    some Mexican coastal communities are now under criminal control.

          And finally, on the global level, nearly two-thirds of
    countries assessed have documented cases of forced labor, child labor,
    or other human rights violations in their seafood supply chains. The
    International Labour Organization conservatively estimates that more
    than 128,000 fishermen are trapped in conditions of forced labor
    worldwide, and the Pew Charitable Trust estimates that over 100,000
    fishermen die each year on the sea, and that is likely an
    underestimate.

        These examples highlight the types of public and semi-private
    networks we are allowing to profit when we fail to enforce
    traceability, transparency, and the rule of law across global seafood
    supply chains. It is through this lens that the strategic imperative
    for our maritime nation becomes crystal clear: how we, our allies, and
    partner nations meet the challenges posed by IUU Fishing contributes to
    countering PRC's increased geopolitical and economic influence through
    natural resource extraction.

    III. Geopolitical Competition and the Seafood Battleground

        Building on this, the Committee should understand that IUU Fishing
    is not merely a conflict and crime problem--it is an instrument of
    geopolitical competition.
        The PRC has built vast distant-water fishing fleets that operate
    with state subsidies, with support vessels for refueling and at-sea
    processing, and with what can be described as deliberate strategic
    intent. These fleets operate in the waters of up to 93 countries. In
    some regions, as many as two-thirds of foreign fishing vessels operate
    with disregard for international and coastal state laws. Predatory
    practices such as AIS manipulation, shell company licensing, bribery,
    and transshipment at sea to launder illegal catch are widely documented
    across West Africa, South America, and the Western Pacific.
        This is not fishing. This is economic coercion. These fleets are
    the maritime equivalent of the debt-trap infrastructure investments we
    have rightly flagged as threats, one example being China's controlling
    interest in Sri Lanka's Hambantota port. These predatory practices are
    designed to secure strategic resource access, spread corruption, build
    dependencies, and extend influence over nations whose maritime
    economies are their primary national asset.
        The consequences are already playing out in regions of direct U.S.
    strategic
    interest:

          In the Indo-Pacific, as noted above, Admiral Paparo,
    Commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, has warned that competition
    over fisheries has the potential to be a real driver of conflict.
    Research has found that the presence of foreign fishing vessels
    contributed to 45 percent of fisheries-related conflict events in the
    Pacific Island region. Small island nations--precisely the nations that
    we desire influence with--are being outcompeted and destabilized.

          In the Arctic, as ice recedes, pollock stocks are
    shifting from American Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) waters to those of
    Russia and other nations. The Alaskan pollock fishery is worth nearly
    $2 billion annually and supports approximately 30,000 American jobs.
    Foreign vessels--primarily fishing for this stock--are already crowding
    the U.S.-Russian maritime border, and the PRC continues to explore the
    Arctic, declaring itself as a near-Arctic nation. Moreover, overhead
    surveillance and communications are at best difficult in the Arctic due
    to the physics of satellite orbits, so maritime presence and
    enforcement patrols are critical to preserve our sovereign interests.
    This need for persistent presence in the challenging Arctic operational
    environment is in part why the efforts of Congress to fund Polar
    Security Cutters (PSCs) and Arctic Security Cutters (ASCs) for the
    United States Coast Guard is so important to protecting U.S. interests
    in that region of increasing geostrategic importance.

          In South America, Argentina has militarily engaged
    Chinese fishing fleets after discovering hundreds of vessels fishing
    illegally in its waters. Chinese distant-water fishing fleets have
    lined the edges of exclusive economic zones around uniquely biodiverse
    ecosystems like the Galapagos Islands.

          Globally, fisheries-related conflict events have
    increased 20-fold since the 1970s. One in four militarized conflicts
    between democracies during the cold war were over access to fisheries
    resources.

        This is the strategic context in which IUU Fishing must be
    understood. As the United States has learned in the rare earth minerals
    context, it is not in America's interest to allow geostrategic
    competitors, like the PRC, to dominate access to critical natural
    resources. Seafood is no different.

    IV. The Economic Stakes for America

        Let me also speak to the economic dimension, since both national
    security and commerce concerns vis-a-vis the PRC are in your purview as
    a Commission.
        The U.S. blue economy--encompassing fisheries, maritime trade,
    shipbuilding, coastal tourism, and marine technology--is a powerful
    engine of American prosperity. The U.S. seafood sector alone is worth
    over $320 billion and employs approximately 2.3 million Americans. The
    United States holds the second-largest marine territory in the world;
    however, 75 to 85 percent of seafood consumed in America is imported.
    That import dependence creates direct exposure to the very IUU Fishing-
    tainted, criminally controlled, and geopolitically manipulated supply
    chains I have just described. The scale of potential economic loss is
    significant: global estimates suggest over $3 trillion in fisheries and
    aquaculture value is at risk over the next decade due to inadequate
    governance and overfishing.
        The return on investment for getting this right is extraordinary.
    Every dollar invested in sustainable ocean resource management yields
    five dollars in return--through food security, economic stability,
    reduced enforcement costs, and preserved marine assets. Conversely,
    failing to act risks ceding strategic resources to competitors,
    empowering criminal networks, and undermining American global maritime
    influence.

    V. The Maritime Safety Enforcement Act and What More Is Needed

        I would like to personally thank Congress for your leadership on
    this issue. The Maritime Security and Fisheries Enforcement Act--
    MSAFE--is a laudable initiative. It authorizes a whole-of-government
    approach for orchestrating and coordinating the efforts of 21
    departments and agencies to combat IUU Fishing, and it requires
    periodic progress update reports to Congress.
        But while it creates a framework for progress, candor requires that
    I also note for this Committee that the working group initiatives
    established under MSAFE have received little dedicated funding outside
    of internal agency reprogramming and modest budget increases, and their
    collective authority and expertise remain significantly underutilized.
    We all know that interagency coordination without the commensurate
    fiscal resourcing is not a strategy--it is principally an exercise in
    paperwork. Moreover, in my experience in government, if strategic joint
    and interagency initiatives in our government are not periodically
    reinvigorated by both Congress and the executive branch, they will
    naturally be relegated, or migrate, to bureaucratic channels at lower
    echelons of our government's departments and agencies.
        Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) have
    strengthened monitoring, control, and surveillance, expanded IUU
    Fishing vessel lists, and helped to improve transparency. However,
    their governing rules, forged around a model of consensus, often allow
    a single nation to block enforcement, including the authority to board,
    inspect, and sanction vessels; hence, they cannot obtain agreements on
    what could be the most effective treaty enforcement measures.
        The U.S. Coast Guard has entered into diplomatic maritime
    agreements that enable combined operations with partner nations to
    counter IUU fisheries, and the service routinely conducts patrols
    focused in part on countering IUU fisheries. Congress has authorized
    the largest, and very needed, acquisition effort in the history of the
    service, including the Fast Response Cutters (FRCs) and Offshore Patrol
    Cutters (OPCs) that are critical to operations that counter IUU
    Fishing. However, it is critical to note that the actions of the U.S.
    Coast Guard at sea alone are insufficient to stem the tide of IUU
    Fishing.
        To this end I recommend that your commission consider three
    strategic shifts:

    1. Reinvigorate American Maritime Governance Leadership

        Maritime governance should be elevated in our Nation's core
    security directives--National Security Directives, congressional
    strategic mandates, and our National Maritime Strategies. Coupling the
    elevation in importance, adequate resourcing mechanisms must enable
    enhanced domestic maritime governance and position the United States as
    a global leader on this front. The National Security Council plays an
    important role to develop and coordinate our IUU Fishing strategic
    efforts to ensure they embody a whole-of-government approach,
    especially when they team with Congress and the Office of Management
    and Budget resourcing those efforts. Resources to implement this
    strategy will allow America to protect, manage, enforce, and deter
    threats to our national maritime resources and to our international
    seafood supply chains and by extension our national security.

    2. Protect America's Maritime Interests Through Alliances and Trade

        In regions of strategic importance--the Indo-Pacific, Latin
    America, the Caribbean, and the Arctic--the United States must deepen
    collaboration with partners on maritime domain awareness, capacity-
    building for fisheries enforcement, fisheries management, and coalition
    efforts to counter IUU Fishing. Critically, this does not require new
    funding lines or programs. Resources from the State Department's
    Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) program and the Defense Security
    Cooperation (DSC) Fund can be authorized for this purpose--because IUU
    Fishing is, at its core, both a national security imperative and a
    transnational organized crime criminal challenge.
        Experience in recent years shows that maritime presence,
    transparent documentation of violations, and coordinated diplomatic
    messaging can change IUU Fishing fleet behavior. More powerfully, when
    multiple nations act together--sharing evidence and issuing demarches--
    states with IUU Fishing-linked fleets often adjust their actions. This
    approach has proven effective in West Africa, the Eastern Pacific, and
    the South China Sea.
        Regional Fisheries Management Organizations need to find a way to
    evolve or mature from diplomatic coordination bodies into more
    intentional actors supporting fisheries treaty enforcement and
    compliance coordination mechanisms, enabling the levying of
    consequences for violations of international fisheries agreements and
    non-adherence to accepted standards for rules-based order at sea. I
    recognize, given the diplomatic realities that they face, that this is
    easier said than done; however, in the face of shared national security
    concerns throughout history, the international community has agreed to
    powerful enforcement regimes--for piracy, the slave trade, and
    narcotics trafficking--a similar approach is needed to address IUU
    Fishing and the associated crimes.
        Finally, we must lead international coalitions to ensure global
    seafood traceability, transparency in foreign access and trade
    agreements, and import controls/market access requirements for catch
    information that can document legal origin. These tools exist and have
    been exercised at times. What is missing is the political emphasis to
    deploy them consistently. This hearing is an indication that this is
    about to change, and I commend you for it. Traceability is optimized
    when paired with data-driven fisheries management. The U.S. has the
    best-managed fisheries in the world.
        Our Regional Fisheries Management Councils balance the interests of
    fishermen, seafood markets, marine biologists, and politicians,
    creating a regulatory framework that levels the playing field for all.
    Sharing our technical expertise, governance process, and enforcement
    regime with partner nations to improve fisheries data collection and
    management would help to address the root causes of IUU Fishing:
    ungoverned fishing of too few fish in the ocean in an unsustainable
    manner.
    3. Strengthen Public-Private Partnerships in a Whole-of-Society Effort

        Even with all the international efforts I have enumerated, IUU
    Fishing persists at scale. We cannot only interdict or regulate our way
    out of this challenge, and the solutions lie beyond the actions of any
    single government or entity. The reality is that a whole-of-society
    response with broad partnership is needed to address IUU Fishing that
    aligns market forces, industry, technology, diplomacy, maritime
    enforcement, regulation, and civil society.
        If major importers of seafood--including the United States, Japan,
    Australia, and the European Union--collectively sanctioned companies
    engaged in IUU Fishing activity, the financial incentive for IUU
    Fishing would be dramatically reduced.
        U.S. departments and agencies are collectively increasing efforts
    to improve seafood traceability to prevent importation. There have been
    episodic successes through innovative interagency law enforcement and
    customs investigations. As an example, Operation JADE SPEAR, a U.S.
    interagency effort, demonstrated the power of combining law enforcement
    investigation, customs enforcement, and coordinated financial actions
    that resulted in the delisting of IUU Fishing-linked companies from the
    NASDAQ Stock Exchange. Interpol has also established a program to
    coordinate international investigations into IUU Fishing criminal
    networks and activity. These enforcement efforts need to be replicated
    and conducted at a much larger scale.
        Industry also has a critical role to play in eliminating IUU
    Fishing from their supply chains. A unified and impactful commitment to
    traceability is needed to transform global seafood supply chains. A
    good example is the ``dolphin safe tuna'' movement in the 1990s, which
    increased the awareness of industry, government, and the public about
    the deaths of dolphins that occurred during tuna fishing and developed
    fishing practices to prevent that from happening. Companies are
    exploring how a similar industry-wide effort could be used to
    illuminate and prevent IUU Fishing from unwittingly existing in their
    supply chain.
        Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) serve as underutilized force
    multipliers in this mission set that could be better leveraged by
    government and international organizations through increased
    communication and engagement with the NGO community. Often NGOs do not
    require U.S. Government funding or support because they operate on
    philanthropic donations. They desire better partnership with U.S.
    departments and agencies to ensure that their efforts are complementary
    and not redundant to U.S. efforts to counter IUU Fishing activity.
        The MSAFE Act has helped to better coordinate the IUU Fishing
    capacity-building efforts of U.S. departments and agencies; however,
    U.S. capacity-building efforts should now be better synchronized across
    agencies, allies, NGOs, and international organizations who are
    involved in similar capacity-building efforts. To build the requisite
    capacity to counter IUU Fishing activity, partner nations need
    coordinated support in law and policy frameworks, maritime domain
    awareness, intelligence sharing, enforcement, customs, and
    traceability.
        Emerging technologies in industry are critical as well--including
    low-cost uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), lower cost patrol vessels,
    commercial satellite data, and AI analytics--which have served to
    dramatically reduce the cost of monitoring EEZs for developing nations.
    Creating sustained offshore presence and awareness in a nation's
    territorial seas, whether through patrols, shiprider agreements, UAS
    surveillance or multinational operations, remains the essential
    objective.
        Emerging UAS capability technologies provide the ability for
    developing nations to overcome the financial barrier-to-entry for
    effective maritime security by replacing very costly traditional manned
    maritime patrol aircraft programs with much lower cost and lower risk
    UAS systems. These systems can now remain airborne for over a day and
    cover a nation's territorial seas and EEZ and provide the ability to
    share ubiquitous surveillance data enhanced by AI capabilities to
    operators and analysts ashore to document IUU Fishing incursions and
    activities in and around their waters. Moreover, industry now also
    offers mission enablers such as Starlink with lower cost communication
    and good bandwidth, which enables most nations to afford access to IUU
    Fishing monitoring information and intelligence at sea.
        It is important to note that nations do not always need to board
    IUU Fishing vessels to be effective. UAS or boat crew photos and
    documentation that enable detailed diplomatic demarches to be sent to
    the offending flag state of the IUU Fishing fleets can be just as
    compelling as a seizure at sea with the same desired effect--compelling
    a modification of behavior and conformance to accepted maritime rules-
    based order.
        Similarly, least developed countries often do not have sufficient
    maritime law enforcement vessels to operate hundreds of miles offshore
    for lengthy periods of time. Recent innovative and lower cost
    approaches to at-sea maritime law enforce-
    ment that have been used by NGOs in Central America can be adopted for
    use in
    Oceania, Africa, and South America as well. Traditional navy and coast
    guard ships and patrol boats are very expensive to acquire and operate,
    but unlike complicated and risky high-speed interdictions of go-fast
    drug trafficking vessels, often at night, least developed countries do
    not need fast interdiction platforms to counter IUU Fishing vessels and
    activity in and around their waters. Instead, effective enforcement
    operations can be accomplished with used offshore supply vessels, which
    can be repurposed to serve as a mother ship or a floating station--with
    plenty of fuel, endurance over 30 days, berthing for multiple boarding
    teams, and 2-4 interceptor boats and crews. This ``wolf pack''
    operational approach can be operated at a fraction of the cost of
    operating typical offshore navy or patrol vessels.
        Combating IUU Fishing will require these types of innovative
    approaches and a departure from our traditional U.S. regional
    engagement business models to maintain affordable at-sea persistent
    presence to catch IUU Fishing violators in the act.
        The private sector--including NGOs and industry partners--can serve
    as critical force multipliers for U.S. Government capacity-building
    efforts. Expanded collab-
    oration and explicit authorization for these partnerships would yield
    significant
    returns.

    VI. Closing

        Members of the Commission: Our ocean fisheries resources have
    historically been treated as a conservation issue, separate from
    geopolitics and national security. That approach has not been
    effective. The threats I have described today--from IUU Fishing tied to
    cartels and arms smuggling, to state-subsidized distant-water fleets
    advancing China's influence in our own hemisphere--are not future
    threat or national security risks. They are present and growing.
        The health and sustainability of our ocean resources, our Nation's
    enforcement of the laws that govern it, our efforts to partner with
    allies on maritime governance, and our efforts to build the capacity of
    nations to combat IUU Fishing in and around their waters are
    inseparable from American maritime strength. The opportunity before
    this Congress is to reframe ocean governance as the strategic
    imperative it is--and to fund, staff, and direct the agencies toward
    whole-of-society partnerships that can meet this challenge.
        I am grateful for the Commission's time and attention to this
    matter, and I look forward to your questions.
                                     ______

                   Prepared Statement of Hon. Dean A. Pinkert

                  Using U.S. Trade Law To Combat Forced Labor
                        in the Chinese Seafood Industry

        Thank you for the opportunity to testify before this distinguished
    Commission on one of the most urgent tasks in U.S. trade enforcement--
    enhancing efforts to address systematic use of forced labor in China's
    seafood industry. My name is Dean Pinkert. I'm a former commissioner of
    the U.S. International Trade Commission, serving as a commissioner from
    2007 to 2017, and as Vice-Chairman of that body from 2014 to 2016. I am
    currently Special Advisor to Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL), a
    human rights nonprofit organization in Chicago. CAL is active in
    petitioning U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for forced labor
    import bans under Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930. In addition,
    CAL participates in the Tariff Act Advocates Group, the Coalition
    Against Forced Labor in Trade, and the Illegal, Unreported, and
    Unregulated (IUU) Fishing & Labor Rights Coalition, and co-chairs the
    Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) Implementation Working
    Group.
        China is the world's largest seafood producer and exporter,
    supplying a substantial share of the fish and shellfish reaching
    American consumers. There is a documented state practice of using
    Uyghur and other minority-group workers, under coercive conditions, in
    Chinese seafood production. Goods produced under these conditions enter
    U.S. commerce at a price advantage underwritten by human suffering.
        Congress has assembled a flexible toolkit of legislation that can
    be used to address this problem--including Section 307, the UFLPA,
    Section 1595a civil penalties, and Section 301 of the Trade Act of
    1974. The issue is not an absence of statutory authority; it is the
    failure to use these tools at scale, in combination, and with the
    creativity the circumstances demand.
            strengthening traceability and transshipment enforcement
                        under section 307 and the uflpa
        Section 307 prohibits the importation of goods produced in whole or
    in part by forced labor, and the UFLPA creates a rebuttable presumption
    that any goods mined, produced, or manufactured in the Xinjiang Uyghur
    Autonomous Region--or by entities on the UFLPA Entity List--are made
    with forced labor and are therefore inadmissible. These are powerful
    tools. But their effectiveness depends on the U.S. Government's ability
    to trace goods from point of harvest through processing to the port of
    entry; the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force's (FLETF's) ability to
    maintain a timely cadence of placing companies on the Entity List; and
    the willingness of CBP to move under Section 307 directly when the
    UFLPA itself does not satisfy enforcement objectives.
        Chinese seafood supply chains are deliberately opaque. Fish caught
    in distant waters can be transshipped through intermediary ports,
    relabeled, commingled with locally sourced product, and re-exported to
    the United States. This can render conventional documentation-based
    compliance less than fully effective. CBP should therefore require
    positive traceability documentation--vessel-level catch certificates,
    processing facility records, and chain-of-custody attestations--for
    high-risk seafood species and sourcing regions. Importers who cannot
    provide this documentation should not be permitted U.S. customs entry
    of their merchandise.
        An existing Federal program provides infrastructure for the
    traceability regime that the forced labor problem in this sector
    demands. The Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP), administered by
    NOAA under 50 C.F.R. Part 300, Subpart Q, already requires collection
    and/or reporting of vessel-level harvest data, species identification,
    and chain-of-custody records for 13 high-risk species. CBP should treat
    SIMP documentation as a necessary--though not always sufficient--
    predicate for admissibility, and NOAA should expand SIMP's species
    coverage to close the gaps that bad actors currently exploit by routing
    tainted product through non-
    covered species and supply chains.\1\ SIMP can also be improved by
    including additional data elements to address labor abuse risks,
    requiring pre-entry notification of SIMP data, enhancing data
    verification and enforcement activity, and formalizing interagency
    coordination and data sharing.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ A recently published meta-analysis shows that seafood
    mislabeling is rampant in the U.S. market, with species substitution
    being the predominant issue, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/
    article/pii/S0956713524008272.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Congress should examine any reluctance on the part of CBP to use
    Section 307 to issue sector-wide Withhold Release Orders covering
    Chinese seafood processed in facilities that have received state-
    transferred labor, without requiring individualized proof of coercion
    at each facility. The need for this is highlighted by the fact that CBP
    appears to regard a Withhold Release Order as a necessary predicate for
    imposing civil penalties on U.S. imports of these products.
                        expanding the uflpa entity list
        The UFLPA Entity List should be expanded, and the FLETF should
    devote particular attention in this regard to Chinese seafood
    processors, cold-chain logistics firms, and fishing fleet operators.
        Listing has asymmetric value, meaning its value greatly exceeds its
    cost, by shifting the burden of proof to importers, creating immediate
    commercial pressure on listed entities, and signaling to the broader
    industry that participation in supply chains tainted by Chinese
    government-mandated forced labor carries legal and reputational
    consequence. The FLETF should set an explicit timetable for seafood-
    sector designations and report to Congress on the evidentiary gaps, if
    any, that they believe have delayed action.
                    civil penalties under 19 u.s.c.  1595a
        Section 1595a authorizes civil penalties for importations made
    contrary to law.\2\ Forced labor importations in violation of Section
    307 fit precisely into this authorization. Yet penalties are rarely
    imposed in the forced labor context, and their deterrent potential has
    largely gone unrealized.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \2\ 19 U.S.C. 1595a(c).
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        A robust Section 1595a enforcement program would provide two
    benefits that detentions alone cannot. First, penalties impose a
    financial cost on importers who have not self-policed their supply
    chains and thereby create a direct economic incentive for upstream due
    diligence. Second, penalty proceedings can generate evidence--through
    CBP's demand for importer documentation and the importer's response--
    revealing supply chain structures otherwise hidden from regulators.
        The ultimate efficacy of such a program will depend in large part
    on how well it is understood by the relevant actors. CBP should
    therefore publicize its enforcement actions and, if possible, provide
    industry and civil society with a penalty matrix that helps them to
    help the government in its efforts to combat forced labor.
              using section 301 to target supply chain bifurcation
        Perhaps the most sophisticated challenge in this space is the
    practice of supply chain bifurcation: companies maintaining nominally
    compliant product lines for export to the United States while
    continuing to use state-imposed forced labor in lines destined for
    other markets or sold domestically. Compliance, in other words, is
    purely performative, staged only for CBP's benefit.
        Section 301 authorizes the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to
    investigate and respond to foreign acts, policies, or practices that
    are unreasonable or discriminatory and burden or restrict U.S.
    commerce. A foreign government policy that induces companies to
    simulate compliance while preserving state-imposed forced labor in non-
    U.S.-destined production is exactly the kind of state-implicated
    anticompetitive practice that Section 301 was designed to address; it
    enables the use of forced labor to achieve economies of scale that work
    to the disadvantage of U.S. producers. USTR must not turn a blind eye
    to the geographic sorting of tainted from untainted shipments.
        The U.S. Government's goal should be that companies disengage
    entirely from state-imposed forced labor rather than allowing it to
    tilt the commercial playing field against U.S. companies.
                                   conclusion
        We have the legal tools to address forced labor in seafood supply
    chains, including where, as in China, it is an instrument of state
    policy. The myriad laws in this space are mutually reinforcing; when
    deployed with strategic coordination and resolve, they can impose
    meaningful costs on companies that seek to benefit from this egregious
    human rights violation.
        Congress should (1) urge the Administration both to mandate that
    seafood traceability documentation be provided to CBP and to enhance
    SIMP to address forced labor risk in the seafood sector, (2) work with
    the FLETF to accelerate UFLPA Entity List designations in the sector,
    (3) provide oversight to press CBP in the direction of an active and
    effective Section 1595a civil penalty program, and (4) explore with the
    USTR the possibility of a Section 301 investigation into supply chain
    bifurcation. Each of these steps is plainly within existing legal
    authority.
        I look forward to the Commission's questions.
                                     ______

                    Prepared Statement of Hon. Dan Sullivan

        We are here today to examine illegal, unreported, and unregulated
    fishing by the People's Republic of China. What we're dealing with is a
    state-backed system--run by the Chinese Communist Party--that combines
    illegal fishing, market manipulation, and forced labor, all in one
    supply chain. And it's happening at scale.
        This system has real consequences for American workers, for law-
    abiding producers, and for the integrity of the global seafood market.
    The PRC has built the world's largest distant-water fishing fleet.
    These vessels do not simply compete. They overwhelm. They cheat. They
    show up in other countries' waters. They push into exclusive economic
    zones. They ignore quotas. They transship and relabel the catch to hide
    its origin.
        That is not fair competition. It is a strategy of economic coercion
    that has direct consequences here at home.
        Alaska is a seafood superpower. We produce over 60 percent of the
    wild-caught seafood in the United States. In Alaska, we have some of
    the best-managed fisheries in the world. Our fishermen follow the law.
    They respect quotas. They manage sustainably. They preserve these
    resources for future generations.
        Alaska fishermen should not be forced to compete against fleets
    that disregard those rules, that benefit from state subsidies, and
    flood global markets with cheap products tied to illegal practices.
    That is not fair competition.
        And it gets worse. There is credible evidence that parts of the PRC
    seafood supply chain involve forced labor, including Uyghur labor and
    North Korean labor in seafood processing. North Koreans and Indonesians
    and others are also being used on Chinese fishing boats in conditions
    that resemble slave labor.
        So when we talk about illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing,
    we are not just talking about resource theft. We are talking about a
    system in which illegal fishing, hidden sourcing, labor exploitation,
    and market distortion are all connected. That should concern all of us.
        Then add Russia to this mix. Russian seafood can be processed in
    China, relabeled, and then pushed back into global markets. This
    undermines sanctions and further distorts prices. It should not be
    possible, but it is happening right now, as we speak. This is a serious
    problem, and it deserves serious attention.
        I weighed in extensively with the Trump administration to
    communicate how much Alaska needs the comprehensive ban on Russian
    seafood imports to the United States to continue. I was happy to see
    the Trump administration renew that ban just a few weeks ago to help
    maintain and strengthen Federal measures that ensure fair trade and
    protect Alaska's fishermen and coastal communities.
        Congress has also begun to respond. The Senate unanimously passed
    my Fighting Foreign Illegal Seafood Harvests (FISH) Act in April. This
    is an effort I worked on for years with my friend Senator Whitehouse,
    who will join us later in the hearing. The bill recognizes that IUU
    fishing is not simply an environmental issue. It is also an economic
    issue, a labor issue, and a national security issue. It will strengthen
    enforcement, improve coordination, and ensure that the United States
    treats these activities with the seriousness they require.
        Congress also passed, and the President signed into law, a
    provision I included in the NDAA last year barring the Pentagon from
    selling or procuring Chinese seafood imports in commissaries or serving
    them in military dining facilities. Our servicemen and women should be
    eating freedom fish from the United States, not communist fish
    harvested using slave labor.
        I have also been a leading advocate for elevating the role of
    seafood within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. We've made
    meaningful progress already. In the FY2026 appropriations, Congress
    provided funding for a Seafood Liaison at USDA. Today, USDA announced
    the creation of a new USDA Office of Seafood. This office is a key
    component for integrating seafood into USDA programs, under the
    direction of the Seafood Liaison, to coordinate seafood policies and
    programs to provide support for our seafood industry, like U.S. farmers
    have. But we need to do more.
        If illegal seafood can still be caught in one place, processed in
    another, relabeled, and sold into the United States, then we still have
    significant gaps to close. If Withhold Release Orders from Customs are
    not being enforced robustly, if traceability remains incomplete, and if
    import controls are still too easy to circumvent, then bad actors will
    continue to exploit those weaknesses.
        That is why this hearing matters. We need to understand where our
    enforcement tools are working, where they are falling short, and what
    more should be done. I'm particularly interested in hearing our experts
    testify on the utility of tools like the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention
    Act. Senator Merkley and I have introduced the follow-on to that bill,
    UGASA (the Uyghur Genocide Accountability and Sanctions Act) that
    reinforces some of these provisions. As it moves through the process,
    maybe there is more we can do with it. We're open to suggestions.
        At the same time, this is not a challenge the United States faces
    alone. Countries around the world are dealing with the same tactics,
    the same coercive pressure, and the same difficulty in enforcing rules
    against distant-water fleets that operate at scale and in the shadows,
    so we need to work with partners to improve enforcement capacity and
    increase the cost of this behavior.
        Though China's IUU fishing is a global and complex problem, at the
    end of the day, the principle here is simple: If you are engaged in
    illegal fishing, if you are exploiting workers, if you are hiding
    both--then you should not have access to the American market. Period.
    That's the standard.
        This hearing is an opportunity to expose the Chinese IUU fishing
    system. It is an opportunity to identify where our policies need to be
    stronger and make clear that the United States intends to defend lawful
    producers, uphold human rights, and enforce the rules.
        I want to thank our witnesses for helping bring transparency to
    what is designed to stay hidden. I look forward to their testimony.

                     Prepared Statement of Hon. Chris Smith

        I want to recognize my Co-chair, Senator Sullivan, for his
    leadership on this issue and his long record of fighting to protect the
    American seafood industry and American fishermen. His FISH Act just
    passed in the Senate and I will be working with my House colleagues to
    get it passed in the House. His amendment in last year's NDAA
    prohibiting Pentagon commissaries from serving Chinese seafood to our
    men and women in uniform was also a giant step forward. This is exactly
    the kind of serious leadership required to address the challenge of
    Chinese IUU fishing.
        From the earliest days of seafaring, the oceans have been governed
    not only by currents and commerce, but by rules--rules that distinguish
    lawful navigation from piracy, fair trade from exploitation, and order
    from lawlessness.
        Today we are confronted with a disturbing modern version of that
    lawlessness: a system of dark fleets, opaque supply chains, illegal
    fishing, and coerced labor that threatens not only American workers but
    also human rights, the rule of law, and our national security.
        Credible reporting and investigative findings have exposed deeply
    troubling practices within China's distant-water fishing fleet and
    seafood processing industry. These include widespread illegal,
    unreported, and unregulated fishing--known as IUU fishing--as well as
    serious human rights abuses, including forced labor.
        As our Commission heard in 2023 during the hearing I chaired titled
    ``From Bait to Plate: How Forced Labor in China Taints America's
    Seafood Supply Chain,'' a significant portion of China's distant-water
    fleet has been linked to labor exploitation, illegal incursions into
    the sovereign waters of other nations, and exploitation of workers.
        The abuse does not end at sea. On land, there are grave concerns
    about the use of forced labor--including Uyghur and North Korean
    labor--in seafood processing facilities tied to global supply chains.
    Products processed under these conditions can make their way into
    international markets, including the United States, raising urgent
    legal, moral, and national security concerns.
        We are joined again today by Mr. Ian Urbina, founder of The Outlaw
    Ocean Project, whose reporting has helped expose these abuses to the
    world. His work, and the work of others, has made one thing
    unmistakably clear: This is not a series of isolated incidents. It is a
    pattern. And it demands a response equal to its scale and seriousness.
        Ian's testimony at our 2023 hearing told of North Korean laborers
    in Chinese seafood processing facilities whose products entered the
    U.S. market.
        We have also recently learned that North Koreans are also being
    employed on Chinese flagged tuna longliners, with evidence of forced
    labor that included debt bondage, physical and verbal abuse, and
    excessive overtime. That is not just labor abuse. It is a sanctions
    evasion issue, a human rights issue, and a national security issue.
        With Senator Merkley and Senator Sullivan, I have called on the
    Departments of State and Homeland Security to coordinate and act
    swiftly to address forced labor in China's seafood industry. We raised
    a particularly alarming possibility: that seafood consumed in the
    United States could be indirectly funding North Korea's nuclear and
    ballistic missile programs.
        Our message was simple. The United States must not allow its
    consumers, its taxpayers, or its government procurement systems to
    become unwitting participants in forced labor or sanctions evasion.
    That means stronger enforcement to stop tainted seafood at the border,
    and it means ensuring that no Federal procurement system--including
    military bases, school meal programs, or other government facilities--
    relies on products linked to forced labor.
        Because let's be clear: China's illegal fishing practices and the
    use of forced labor in its seafood supply chain are not merely
    unethical--they are in clear violation of U.S. law, including the
    Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (which I led with Senators Rubio and
    Merkley and Representative McGovern) and the Countering America's
    Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.
        We know the administration has said that addressing IUU fishing is
    a priority. We know Customs and Border Protection has issued Withhold
    Release Orders on Chinese vessels and barred products from at least one
    Chinese seafood processor.
        We know CBP has the authority to act. What we need to know now is
    whether that authority is being used with the urgency and rigor this
    crisis demands.
        After our 2023 hearing, Chinese seafood was added to CBP's priority
    enforcement list. Companies and retailers took notice--Lotte stores in
    South Korea and McDonald's promised to stop importing Chinese seafood.
        We hope today's hearing produces that same kind of impact--but more
    important--we hope it leads to sustained action.
        This hearing is about protecting American jobs and protecting
    national security as well. China's distant-water fishing fleet does not
    operate in a vacuum. These vessels often advance the Chinese Communist
    Party's objectives: asserting maritime claims, projecting presence in
    disputed waters, distorting markets, and exploiting vulnerable workers
    in service of larger geopolitical ambitions.
        So this is about more than seafood. It is about whether the United
    States will tolerate a system that rewards coercion, harms American
    fishermen, weakens sanctions enforcement, creates food insecurity in
    Africa, and erodes the integrity of global commerce.
        That is why we are here today, and that is why this hearing
    matters.

                           Submissions for the Record

                                  ----------

              Questions for Admiral Clendenin from Chair Sullivan

        Question. What specific resources do you believe are needed to make
    the U.S. Coast Guard more effective in meeting Illegal, Unreported, and
    Unregulated (IUU) fishing interdiction goals?
        Answer. The views expressed in this response are my own and do not
    represent the official position of the U.S. Government or the U.S.
    Coast Guard.
        Over the past 4 years, Congress has provided the Coast Guard with
    additional resources dedicated to counter-IUU fishing. These funds have
    been applied toward additional positions and the establishment of an
    IUU Center of Excellence in Hawaii. My understanding is that these
    investments have significantly strengthened the Service's ability to
    combat IUU fishing. As Congress revisits the IUU challenge with renewed
    interest and focus--and given that these resources were allocated
    several years ago--this is an appropriate time for the Coast Guard to
    reassess its level of both capabilities and capacity employed in this
    mission area, and more specifically to report whether the resources
    provided in 2020 remain adequate today for a mission that has, and
    continues to, expand in both geographic scope and strategic importance.
        As noted in my testimony, persistent at-sea presence remains the
    single most important factor in the Coast Guard's ability to counter
    IUU fishing, and therefore the Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC) acquisition
    program is essential. In addition to providing the global reach and
    capacity required to respond to IUU incursions, to support partner
    nations, and to increase persistent presence on the high seas, OPCs are
    urgently needed to replace the aging Medium Endurance Cutter fleet,
    which is operating decades beyond its intended service life. These
    legacy cutters face increasing maintenance challenges resulting in
    reduced operational availability (days on patrol at sea), limiting the
    Service's ability to sustain patrols in contested or remote regions.
    The OPCs will be the backbone of the Coast Guard's at-sea capacity and
    will be the workhorses supporting the Service's efforts to stem IUU
    fishing.
        As IUU fishing activity expands into the Arctic and higher
    latitudes, the Arctic Security Cutter (ASC), currently under
    construction, will provide indispensable capability and capacity.
    Conventional non-icebreaking-capable cutters cannot safely operate in
    or near ice, and communications and overhead imagery are more
    challenging in the Arctic due to satellite-orbit geometry. The planned
    fleet of 11 Arctic Security Cutters will provide the persistent
    presence required to deter and respond to incursions into U.S. northern
    waters. Until the ASC fleet is fully operational, the interim high-
    latitude capabilities provided by USCGC STORIS, which was placed into
    service in August 2025, will remain critical.
        The modularization program currently being prototyped on STORIS--
    and directed by the Executive Order on Restoring America's Maritime
    Dominance--is particularly important for the IUU mission, especially in
    the Arctic. Modern containerized modularity enables rapid augmentation
    of capabilities such as additional berthing, enhanced communications,
    expanded intelligence capabilities, and embarked scientific modules.
        Both the ASC and Polar Security Cutter (PSC) classes will be
    designed to embark these modular capabilities, allowing each patrol to
    be tailored to mission requirements.
        Last, Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) capabilities will be essential
    to the IUU mission in a variety of ways. UAS will soon be embarked on
    most Coast Guard cutters, providing organic surveillance capability
    that will greatly enhance maritime domain awareness for the IUU
    mission. In addition, UAS aerial patrols for counter-IUU fisheries
    missions in the Arctic limit risk to manned aircraft and their embarked
    crews given the harsh operational conditions found in the northern
    latitudes. Continued support for the Coast Guard's UAS program will be
    essential and may present an area that would benefit from increased
    resourcing.
        Thank you for your leadership on this critically important IUU
    fishing mission, which is vital to U.S. national security, regional
    stability, and global food security.

        Question. Are there other Coast Guard-related priorities that can
    help on the IUU fishing front?
        Answer. The views expressed in this response are my own and do not
    represent the official position of the U.S. Government or the U.S.
    Coast Guard.
        In 2020, the 26th Commandant, Admiral Schultz, in the Service's IUU
    Fishing Strategic Outlook, identified combating IUU fishing as the top
    operational concern for the majority of America's maritime partner-
    nation Coast Guards and Navies. Schultz noted, ``The Coast Guard's IUU
    Fishing Strategic Outlook outlines the Service's efforts to combat the
    scourge of IUU fishing over the next decade. We are committed to
    working with our allies and like-minded partners to strengthen the
    international fisheries enforcement regime and counter this pervasive
    threat. As a recognized world leader in maritime safety, security and
    environmental stewardship, the Coast Guard has a responsibility to help
    build a coalition of partners willing to identify and address IUU
    fishing bad actors and model responsible global maritime behavior.''
    Since publishing this Strategic Outlook, co-chairing the MSAFE IUU
    Committee, and expanding the Service's global engagement, the Coast
    Guard has become an international leader in counter-IUU maritime
    governance and operations. However, as noted in my testimony, the Coast
    Guard cannot address this challenge alone. A whole-of-society approach
    that integrates the work of Federal departments and agencies, industry,
    nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and civil society is required.
        To support this, IUU fishing should be elevated within national
    security priorities to a level comparable to narcotics trafficking and
    piracy. The MSAFE interagency effort should receive increased
    visibility, provide regular updates to Congress and the executive
    branch, and have its efforts incorporated into periodic, focused
    National Security Council-level discussions.
        The Coast Guard, along with other departments and agencies,
    conducts extensive international capacity-building related to counter-
    IUU fishing, including law-
    enforcement instruction, fisheries education, legal and policy
    development, and broader capacity-building initiatives. A persistent
    challenge is ensuring that these efforts are coordinated not only
    across U.S. agencies, but also with foreign partners and
    nongovernmental organizations, to ensure they are additive and
    complementary rather than redundant. Additionally, these activities
    must be more closely aligned with operational objectives and measurable
    outcomes. Departments and agencies often report activities rather than
    results and impact, frequently providing only anecdotal examples. A
    system of macrolevel indicators--developed jointly with intelligence
    and NGO communities--would allow the United States to assess whether
    global IUU fishing trends are improving.
        Improved intelligence collaboration is also essential. The U.S.
    Government shares information and intelligence with partners and NGOs
    through collaborative IT platforms and through Information Fusion
    Centers to improve awareness of vessels engaged in IUU fishing
    activities. While this effort is important, these mechanisms often
    remain cumbersome due to information-sharing policy constraints that
    prevent broader collaboration. Analytic products from NGOs--such as
    Global Fishing Watch--can exceed both the quality and timeliness of
    information available from the U.S. Government. The advantage of the
    IUU fishing mission is that classified information is not essential to
    produce quality targeting data. Crowd-sourced efforts to enrich
    unclassified, commercially available overhead data--enhanced with
    artificial intelligence--can provide timely information on IUU fishing
    fleets and fully inform priority patrol areas globally. Greater
    collaboration in unclassified, publicly releasable platforms would
    allow U.S. agencies, foreign partners, and NGOs to fully collaborate
    using the same data, enabling timely shared tactical information
    without releasability barriers. This would significantly enhance
    operational awareness for all partner nation patrols.
        Coast Guard efforts must also be integrated into broader joint and
    interagency initiatives outside the Service's traditional mission
    areas. While the Coast Guard provides the persistent presence, boarding
    capability, and intelligence support needed to challenge IUU fishing at
    sea, it does not have the lead role in traceability, import
    inspections, or supply chain enforcement. The Coast Guard supports
    these efforts through intelligence and the Coast Guard Investigative
    Service, but as noted in my testimony, effective international
    traceability and inspection regimes--implemented in close partnership
    with industry--are essential. Reducing the market for IUU-tainted
    seafood imports would diminish the economic incentives that drive IUU
    fishing globally. Without this effort, it will be difficult to counter
    global IUU fishing effectively through at-sea enforcement alone.
        The Coast Guard's efforts need to be fully integrated into a
    broader unified, coordinated, whole-of-society approach--bringing
    together joint and interagency resources, foreign partners, NGOs, and
    civil society. This approach would significantly strengthen national
    efforts to counter IUU fishing. This synergy can be achieved through
    regular, structured engagement of the MSAFE Committee and its working
    groups by congressional and executive branch leadership, including
    periodic discussion and progress monitoring at the National Security
    Council level.
        Thank you for your leadership in addressing the IUU fishing
    challenge, which is vital to U.S. national security, regional
    stability, and global food security.

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                              Witness Biographies

        Ian Urbina, Director and Founder, The Outlaw Ocean Project

        Ian Urbina is the founder and director of The Outlaw Ocean Project,
    a Washington, DC-based nonprofit journalism organization that
    investigates human rights, environmental, and labor abuses across the
    world's oceans. Before launching the project, he spent nearly 17 years
    as a staff reporter for the New York Times. His work has earned
    numerous honors, including a Pulitzer Prize, two George Polk Awards,
    and an Emmy.

        Rear Admiral Scott W. Clendenin, USCG (Ret.), Owner, Dog Zebra
    Solutions LLC

        Rear Admiral Scott Clendenin served 33 years on active duty in the
    U.S. Coast Guard and retired as Assistant Commandant for Response
    Policy, where he oversaw operational policy across seven mission areas.
    He spent 14 years at sea on six Coast Guard cutters, commanded four of
    them, and led international multi-mission patrols involving narcotics
    interdiction, fisheries enforcement, mass-migration response, search
    and rescue, and disaster response. Ashore, he held senior intelligence
    and policy roles supporting national operations and interagency
    efforts. He is a 1990 graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

        Hon. Dean A. Pinkert, Special Advisor, Corporate Accountability Lab

        The Honorable Dean A. Pinkert is an international trade and human
    rights consultant who serves as special advisor to Corporate
    Accountability Lab. He spent 10 years as a commissioner at the U.S.
    International Trade Commission, including 2 years as Vice Chairman. He
    has testified before Congress and has written and spoken widely on
    trade policy, including U.S. efforts to prevent the importation of
    goods produced with forced labor.

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