No, Canadian and Japanese Boats Cannot Fish in U.S. Marine Monuments While Americans Cannot — Here's What the Law Actually Says

Trump made this claim most prominently around his June 2020 executive order on fishing, arguing that marine monument designations created an unfair playing field — American fishermen locked out while foreign fleets moved in freely. The verdict: the foreign-vessel part of that story is false, even if the domestic restrictions are real.

Here is the basic legal reality. U.S. marine monuments sit inside the country's 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone. The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the main federal law governing U.S. fisheries, broadly prohibits foreign commercial fishing anywhere in that zone without specific federal authorization, according to NOAA. No such authorization exists for Canadian or Japanese vessels in monument waters. The monuments did not create a loophole for foreign boats — they never had legal access to begin with.

PolitiFact rated Trump's specific claim False after reviewing the law, and the Washington Post Fact Checker found no evidence that Canada or Japan held any legal fishing rights in these areas. NOAA's own monument regulations confirm that the rules apply equally to all vessels operating in U.S. federal waters, domestic or foreign. The Conservation Law Foundation reviewed the full legal framework and found no treaty, regulation, or agreement that would give foreign fleets preferential access.

To be fair to the underlying concern: U.S. commercial fishermen are genuinely affected by monument designations. The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts monument, for example, did restrict American lobster and red crab fishing in productive offshore areas. That is a legitimate policy debate worth having. But the claim that foreign competitors were simultaneously allowed in is not supported by any law or evidence — it is a false contrast that made a real grievance sound far more outrageous than the facts warrant.

This kind of claim spreads because it takes a genuine frustration and attaches a villain. Fishermen losing access to traditional grounds is a concrete economic harm. Layering on a story about foreign boats getting a free pass transforms a regulatory dispute into an apparent betrayal. Watch for this pattern: a real restriction on Americans paired with an invented or exaggerated foreign exception. The emotional logic is powerful even when the facts fall apart.