American Seafoods Company fights giant Jones Act penalties

Photo 147603273 © Ekaterina Oleshko | Dreamstime.com

The extraordinary story of seafood shipper American Seafoods Co, which transports fish and other seafoods from Alaska to customers in the US east coast region. To circumvent Jones Act regulations, which forbids non-US shipping lines from carrying domestic cabotage cargo from one US port to another, American Seafoods has been sending its shipments on foreign-flagged vessels via the Panama Canal to Canada’s Atlantic coast, and then transporting overland to the US. The company argues that the practice is perfectly legitimate. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) disagrees and has so far issued penalties totalling $350m, according to The Maritime Executive. American Seafoods has called it “an unjustifiable agency overreach”.