Indonesian fisheries entrepreneurs are expected to take advantage of the momentum of China's trade war against the United States of America -USA to increase fishery product exports. The opportunity that can be taken from the momentum is to fill the fisheries export market to the USA because Chinese entrepreneurs have difficulty exporting after being given high import tariffs by the USA. This was stated by Minister of Marine and Fisheries Affairs, Susi Pudjiastuti in a press statement in Jakarta on Friday, (September 21, 2018).
“The reality of the trade war between China and the USA is that should the Indonesian businesspeople should gain advantage and can make breakthroughs in a bid to be able to take incentives in the beneficial situations of this trade war. Thus, many companies from China that export to the USA will be difficult and surely, that will be our opportunity to produce more,” Susi Pujiastuti said.
Furthermore, Minister Susi also reminded that Indonesian fisheries businesses should not use shortcuts to gain profits from China's and US trade war that could potentially harm Indonesia. One of the shortcuts is by doing a "transit document" or borrowing names so that goods from China can enter the USA on behalf of Indonesia. She views that the same thing happened in 2004 which ultimately made Indonesia unprofitable from the increase in import tariffs imposed by the United States to 5 countries. In fact, due to borrowing the name, Indonesia almost received the threat of an embargo on fishery products from the USA. Therefore, Minister Susi wants to make sure this occurrence will not happen again. This can be done by implementing a Legal Reported Regulated Fishing policy -LRRF or integrated reporting to eradicate Illegal Unreported Unregulated Fishing -IUUF. (VOI/Rezha/Trans by Rhm)