Key salmon products were pulled last week from a revised list of goods imported to the U.S. from China that are subject to tariffs in a trade battle between the two countries.
The removal of two categories of salmon fillets from that list is significant for product that gets exported to China for reprocessing before coming back to the U.S.
The change is welcome news for Alaska's seafood industry, said Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute executive director Alexa Tonkovich. But other salmon and U.S. seafood products heading to China's market for consumption there are still affected by tariffs.
"This is a piece of good news for salmon coming back into the U.S.," she said. "The bad news is, pretty much all Alaska seafood products for the Chinese market are still subject to additional tariffs."
Between July and August, President Donald Trump's administration imposed tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods, and China responded with tariffs on the same amount of U.S. products.
Last month, the battle continued. Trump imposed tariffs on an additional $200 billion worth of Chinese imports. China retaliated again, with tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. goods.
[China is the biggest market for Alaska seafood exports. The tariff war is raising concerns.]
Seafood harvested in Alaska typically goes through primary processors here, where it is headed, gutted, and frozen. Some products then head to China for what's called reprocessing, which can involve picking out smaller bones and turning it into fillets.
Salmon fillets in the specific categories removed from the list were worth more than $230 million in import value in 2017, said Garrett Evridge, an economist at Anchorage research and consulting firm the McDowell Group. That value isn't specific to Alaska products.
There are still smaller categories of salmon products that remain on the list of goods facing tariffs, but the value of those is much smaller, Evridge said.
"The magnitude of the tariffs has been reduced significantly by the exclusion of these key categories," he said.
Alaska has been making efforts to strengthen its ties with China, which is the biggest market for the state's seafood exports.
"China's still a billion-dollar market that we're now being curtailed to compete effectively in," Tonkovich said. "It's short-term good news, still a long-term problem."
Some other U.S. seafood products have also been removed from the list, including types of pollock and cod products.