[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
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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.
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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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