Seafood exports to the US continue to face heavy pressure from trade remedy measures, increasingly stringent technical requirements, and rising logistics costs. Against the backdrop where the US remains an important consumer market, these difficulties are creating significant pressure on Vietnam's seafood export growth target in 2026.

According to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), during the first 5 months of 2026, Vietnam's seafood exports to the US reached 689 million USD, a decrease of 10% compared to the same period last year. The primary cause originates from the impacts of tariff policies, technical barriers, and increasingly complex trade remedy measures.

For the shrimp industry, enterprises continue to face anti-dumping cases, anti-subsidy duties, and administrative review rounds from the US side. Meanwhile, the pangasius commodity also bears pressure from anti-dumping duties, trade investigations, along with increasingly high requirements regarding quality, traceability, and compliance with import regulations.

The wild-caught seafood group is also encountering multiple challenges because the requirement to execute the US Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) is driving up compliance costs, stretching the time to finalize dossiers, and affecting the capacity to sign as well as execute orders. Commodities such as tuna, squid, octopus, crab, and multiple other wild-caught seafood products are the groups bearing the most distinct impacts from these regulations.

Alongside policy barriers, seafood enterprises also have to face the pressure of rising logistics costs. In just a few days in mid-June, many shipping lines concurrently announced freight rate hikes, with some routes increasing by up to 30%. Within this, shipping freight to the US East Coast rose by around 2,000 – 3,000 USD per container, while the route to the US West Coast increased by over 1,000 USD per container. This constitutes a massive cost item for exporting enterprises, especially in a context of increasingly fierce international competition.

With the frozen seafood industry, logistics costs directly affect product production costs, delivery progress, and profit margins. Commodities possessing high levels of competition like shrimp, pangasius, tuna, squid, and octopus will bear more powerful impacts when transportation costs rise, making it difficult for enterprises to maintain selling prices and compete with rivals that possess advantages in production scale or geographical location.

According to VASEP, the US currently remains a market with high policy risks for Vietnamese seafood. Apart from anti-dumping and anti-subsidy measures, enterprises also have to satisfy a series of import management and control programs such as the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP), equivalence evaluations, marine mammal protection requirements, as well as contents related to forced labor and child labor within the framework of Section 301 investigations by the US.

These regulations not only drive up legal costs, data costs, and compliance verification but also harbor potential risks of disrupting export activities, because the US is a large consumer market for many of Vietnam's core products such as shrimp, pangasius, tuna, crab, squid, and octopus... Therefore, current barriers can significantly affect the 2026 export growth target.

Another issue receiving concern from many enterprises is the deployment of the US regulation on marine mammal protection (MMPA), which entered into full force starting January 1, 2026. According to this regulation, the US only recognizes a number of marine fisheries of Vietnam as equivalent to its standards. Fisheries not yet recognized face the risk of not being permitted to export products into the US market, while recognized fisheries must possess a CoA certificate.

However, the process of issuing CoA certificates according to Circular No. 74/2025/TT-BNNMT currently still encounters multiple bottlenecks. The characteristic of seafood exploitation in Vietnam primarily involves small, fragmented scales through many intermediate purchasing stages, so tracing origins back to fishing vessels, fishing gear, and exploitation zones encounters no small amount of difficulties. This causes multiple commodities like crab, squid, octopus, tuna, and other wild-caught seafood products to confront risks regarding dossiers, procedure processing time, arising costs, as well as the capacity to satisfy delivery progress for partners.

Confronting that reality, VASEP stated that it timely reported shortcomings related to Circular 74 to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. Currently, the Ministry has directed reviewing and studying amendments to inappropriate regulations to facilitate more favorable conditions for export activities.

To maintain market share in the US market, VASEP petitioned the Government along with related ministries and sectors to continue supporting enterprises during the process of responding to trade remedy cases, equivalence evaluation programs, and newly arising technical requirements. Concurrently, there needs to be solutions to resolve bottlenecks in certification procedures, traceability, and compliance with international standards, thereby helping the seafood industry upgrade competitive capacity and firmly maintain its position in one of the most important export markets today.

Source: Tap chi Thuy san Viet Nam