A determination of factors affecting U.S. imports of catfish and trout

The United States is one of the major seafood product importers in the world. Despite the increases in global seafood and aquaculture consumption over the past decades, there is a need for updated information on the trade dynamics of the U.S. imports of key aquaculture species such as catfish and trout. To address this gap, this study uses an augmented gravity model to evaluate the factors that have influenced catfish and trout imports into the United States. The analysis was conducted using the Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimator to address issues of heteroskedasticity, autocorrelation, and zero trade flows. The results highlight the importance of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and exchange rates in explaining catfish trade, while distance and free trade agreements (FTAs) play a significant role in trout imports. The inclusion of country-pair and seasonal fixed effects demonstrates how unobserved factors tend to influence trade volumes, diminishing the importance of key variables in the gravity model, such as GDP. Moreover, findings indicate that protective measures such as tariffs and antidumping duties may not affect imports as intended.