U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) tore into foreign import trade practices undercutting Alabama’s timber and shrimp industries during a Senate hearing with USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins, demanding aggressive tariffs to protect producers across the state.
Alabama’s forestry sector carries a $36 billion annual economic impact, supports more than 40,000 jobs, and ranks fourth nationally in lumber production. Tuberville told Rollins the industry is under siege.
“My foresters are getting killed. Our sawmills are closing down,” Tuberville said. “We’re getting beat up by Canada. I think we have a 25 percent tariff on Canada. It needs to be about 60, 70 percent. They are flooding our country with lumber.”
Tuberville saved his sharpest fire for China, where he said companies buy Alabama timber, ship it overseas for milling, and send finished products back at prices domestic manufacturers cannot match.
“China can come in and buy our lumber, our trees, and cut our trees, put them on ships, ship them back, mill them, make cabinets out of them, the same that we make here, and then ship them back and they undercut our prices,” Tuberville said. “We need to tariff the hell out of China.”
Rollins said the USDA plans to prioritize timber alongside cotton and rice in its trade agenda and will coordinate with the administration’s trade team.
Tuberville also pressed Rollins on the collapse of the Gulf Coast shrimp industry. A NOAA Fisheries report released in March found the Gulf shrimp industry has lost $268 million in revenue since 2021, with active vessels declining 19% as cheap foreign imports flood the market. In Alabama alone, shrimp accounts for 80% of the state’s commercial fisheries harvest and the seafood industry supports nearly 7,000 jobs.
“We raised on the Gulf Coast about four percent of the shrimp that we eat in our country,” Tuberville said. “96 percent of the shrimp that we eat comes from other countries. If you buy it in a grocery store, basically if you’re not on the coast, you’re eating shrimp that comes from sewers from Vietnam, from Cambodia. It’s atrocious.”
Rollins pointed to the creation of the USDA’s first-ever Office of Seafood, established six months ago to advocate for American fishermen and shrimpers. She also noted her new seat on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a move Tuberville has long championed to give agriculture a voice in foreign investment oversight.
Sawyer Knowles is a state and political reporter for Yellowhammer News. You may contact him at [email protected].
