By Greg Locke.
ST. JOHN’S, NL – The Newfoundland and Labrador fishing industry will get a double hit in the 2025 trade wars with the USA and China. They could put an end to the industry completely.
The small Canadian province (economic wise) derives its income from fish, mining, oil and hydroelectricity. But fish is the reason Newfoundland exists. It was colonized for the purpose of exploiting cod fish, whales and seals 500 years ago by the English, French, Basque and Portuguese.
In 1992 the cod fishery came to an end, was driven to extinction by over-fishing by corporate-owned factory freezer trawlers primarily from Spain, Portugal, Russia, Japan, and Canada.
The disaster took $6 billion (CDN) in revenue and 30,000 jobs in a province of 400,000 people with it.
The jobs didn’t come back, but the money did. Fishermen who could re-tooled for new species such as crab and shrimp. Today those species are worth $6.6 billion (CDN) to Newfoundland and Labrador, estimated to be one-third of the province’s income.
The Newfoundland fishery has had many ups and downs in its history. With the trade tariffs from the United States and China, it’s headed for a downfall again.
More than 85 percent of Newfoundland’s catch is exported to the USA and China, with the bulk to the USA market. With those countries placing 20-percent plus tariffs on that seafood, it will make it near impossible to sell at a competitive price point. If fishermen and fish processing companies cannot sell, they cannot go fishing.
This reflects the reality of other Canadian fisheries, such as lobster from Nova Scotia and PEI, with a severe impact on those provincial economies as well.
As with other Canadian products, we are realizing that doing the easy thing and selling all our products into a single market, the USA, leaves producers in a precarious position should the USA decide it doesn’t want to trade with Canada anymore.
A small portion of Newfoundland fish goes to Europe, but the EU market cannot possibly take the excess. The USA market is massive. There’s not much Canada can do if the US cuts it off.
But China? China is a self-inflected wound by Canada. Canada placed a unilateral tariff on Chinese products to Canada. Unprovoked. This was to align itself with US trade policy.
China, logically, retaliated. This one is easy to fix. Drop the sanctions on China.
With friends like the USA and its unpredictable behaviour and politics, and that it no longer respects its international trade agreements, Canada needs all the friends it can get.
Even China.