WASHINGTON — It looks like catfish, it tastes like catfish, and it acts like catfish.
But to U.S. catfish farmers, the whiskered, bottom-feeding fish from Vietnam is something else: a cheap variety that’s usurping the humble catfish’s place on Americans’ tables and threatening their livelihoods.
So after years of arguing that the Vietnamese fish isn’t catfish — and winning a federal law saying as much — the U.S. farmers are trying to have it both ways. Under their latest lobbying strategy, they want the Vietnamese imports considered catfish so that they will be covered by a new inspections regime that they pushed through Congress last year.
The move — an example of how influential industries work their will in Congress — could block Vietnamese imports for years and risks a broader trade war. Ben Evans, The Associated Press
