From the icy harbors of Maine to the tropical waters around American Samoa, our commercial fishermen have long fed our nation, sustained our coastal communities, and defended our food security. 

Yet, both the Obama and Biden administrations have treated these warriors of the sea as expendable.

This week, President Donald Trump took decisive action to reverse this trend with two executive orders that together form the foundation of an America First Fishing Policy.

One ends the shutdown of nearly half a million square miles of US waters in the Pacific — waters vital to American Samoa's economy. The other targets a deep swamp of over-regulations that now sacrifice our own fisherman on the altar of foreign competition, as well as a flood of unfairly traded seafood imports responsible for gutting our domestic fleets.

In 2009, President George W. Bush created the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. In 2014, President Barack Obama recklessly expanded the size of the monument, thereby cutting off commercial fishing across nearly 500,000 square miles.

And in the wake of Obama's overreach, the law of unintended consequences kicked in with a vengeance.

While US commercial fishermen have been effectively barred from America's own offshore Exclusive Economic Zones (the jurisdiction extending 200 nautical miles from America's shores), illegal, unreported, and unregulated poaching by foreign fleets — particularly from China — has skyrocketed.

Meanwhile, Samoan vessels have been forced to travel farther, spend more, and compete in international waters against subsidized, unregulated fleets from China, along with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

This has had devastating consequences for American Samoa. 

Tuna fishing and processing are the economic backbone of American Samoa. Roughly 5,000 jobs — direct and indirect — are tied to the tuna industry, representing more than 25 percent of the local workforce.

The StarKist cannery in Pago Pago — one of the largest tuna processing facilities in the world — is the territory's largest private employer and the anchor of a vast supply chain that includes local fishing vessels, offloading crews, cold storage facilities, packaging operations, and transport services.