Norway’s seafood export market trended positively in 2025 for every region in the world – except for the U.S.
“The E.U., U.K., and China? All grew 6 or 7 percent last year. The U.S. is the only big market with a decrease in the import value, and we can imagine what is going on there,” Norwegian Seafood Council (NSC) Analyst Eivind Hestvik Brækkan said ahead of the 2026 Seafood Expo Global, which runs from 21 to 23 April in Barcelona, Spain.
Brækkan said the reasons behind the decline are obvious. Tariffs implemented by U.S. President Donald Trump on all Norwegian goods put the country’s seafood exports at a disadvantage compared to many other major seafood exporters. Norway’s seafood export value managed to hit a record-breaking NOK 181.5 billion (USD 19.5 billion, EUR 16.5 billion) in 2025, and at the start of the year, exports to the U.S. were growing fast enough to make it the top market for Norwegian seafood.
That momentum reversed in the second half of the year, enough so that overall seafood export value to the U.S. dropped by 1 percent for the year and lagged behind other major export destinations.
The story so far in FY 2026 hasn’t been much different, according to Brækkan, and it’s a decrease that’s not exclusive to Norway. So far this year, across nearly every species of seafood, imports in the U.S. are down, with most down double-digit percentages.
“If you have another market than the U.S. to send it to, you will,” Brækkan said.
The only exception to that rule has been salmon imports. So far in 2026, the U.S. has been importing more salmon than it did in 2025, though much of those imports have come from outside Norway. Chilean salmon, Brækkan said, is the majority supplier, and the majority of Chile’s exports head to the U.S.
However, the U.S. market doesn’t leave a lot of room for growth, Brækkan said, and the South American country is vulnerable to fluctuations in U.S. demand because of how much of Chile’s market is made up of U.S. purchases.
Norway is not immune from being highly dependent on one market for its seafood exports, either, Brækkan said. Norway is extremely dependent on the U.S. market for products like king crab and snow crab in the wake of sanctions on Russia that tilted export trends in the country’s favor.
However, its salmon market is widely diversified, he said, giving it more room to navigate the upswings and downswings of the global economy and geopolitical complications like the ongoing war in Iran.
“We are much less dependent on one single market than the Chileans,” Brækkan said. “The only market that did not have quite strong growth was the U.S. in the start of this year.”
Of the countries that saw strong growth, China is a clear standout.
NSC Country Director to China Sigmund Bjorgo highlighted statistics showing massive increases to China in terms of seafood export value.
“So far this year, China is Norway’s second-biggest seafood market. Last year, China became the third-biggest market and the fastest-growing market,” Bjorgo said.
In February, Norway’s seafood export value to China increased 54 percent, and in March, it jumped 68 percent.
“It has been huge growth, in February and March this year, both in terms of volume and value,” Bjorgo said.
The growth has largely been a recent trend and is mainly driven by demand for salmon in China. China purchased just under 100,000 metric tons (MT) of salmon in 2019, a number that shortly thereafter collapsed in 2020 amid the Covid-19 pandemic. China’s imports of Norwegian salmon didn’t recover until 2023, and taken side by side between 2019 and 2023, salmon exports overall only grew 8 percent.
Things started to ramp up in 2024 with 8 percent growth, and then in 2025, “everything exploded,” Bjorgo said.
“The growth phase that we are currently into in the Chinese salmon market started in the fourth quarter of 2024 and is still growing strong,” he said.
Last year, the country was the world’s fourth-biggest salmon market, up from the eighth-biggest salmon market in 2023 and the sixth in 2024.
While it is a long way to becoming the largest salmon market in the world, growth is rapid, and the room for more growth in the future is vast, according to Bjorgo.
Per capita, seafood consumers in China consume the equivalent of three to four slices of sashimi salmon per person.
However, Bjorgo said that if China’s consumption inched more toward the rates of the top consuming markets, it would be far and away the biggest market.
“As a fun fact, if China were to consume as much per capita as in Hong Kong, China alone would consume the entire world market for salmon, plus a few hundred thousand tons,” Bjorgo said.
Realistically, China will never come close to that level of consumption in the next few decades, Bjorgo said, but the thought experiment highlights how vast the market is for the products. Growth so far this year has reached a level that even if every other month in 2026 was flat, it would still be up 9 percent due to the strength of the market in the first three months of the year, he explained, adding that the reasons for the increase are multifold.
High convenience due to online purchasing has shifted consumption habits away from restaurants primarily, as Chinese consumers opt to purchase food for delivery on their phones. Widespread livestreaming is also popularizing salmon, driving consumers toward the species, Bjorgo said.
Bjorgo issued a warning, though, that the current trajectory of salmon imports is too high to be permanent, and he predicts the growth will flatten in 2026. However, even with a flatter trajectory for the remainder of the year, China will still be purchasing 20 percent to 30 percent more Norwegian seafood in 2026, he said, predicting that the market may become the second-largest for Norwegian salmon in the future.
“I still believe that we are in the early stage of the Chinese salmon market, and we are in the explosion of expansion right now as we speak. That cannot last forever,” Bjorgo said. “But, that market still has the muscle with the underlying growth potential. I am 100 percent certain.”