Millions of pounds of Asian crabmeat will continue to flow into the U.S. under a deal struck by trade officials and seafood companies led by Baltimore’s Phillips Foods Inc.

A settlement Friday in the U.S. Court of International Trade postpones a Jan. 1 ban on crabmeat from Southeast Asian countries of Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Most of the packaged crabmeat in the U.S. comes from the three countries, according to import data.

Those countries will have six more months at least to comply with U.S. fishing standards to protect whales and dolphins. The settlement also gives companies such as Phillips a chance to join negotiations and show that the foreign fishermen they get crabs from meet the U.S. standards.

Trade authorities announced this summer that fisheries from 46 nations had either missed a paperwork deadline or failed to meet requirements of the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Phillips, along with Handy Seafood Inc. and Byrd International, both of Salisbury, among others, had faced the prospect that they would no longer be allowed to import millions of pounds of crabmeat. Southeast Asia supplies more than two-thirds of the foreign crabmeat in the U.S.

“Crab cakes are coming off the menu,” the importers warned. Phillips said it stands to lose almost $180 million in revenue a year.

“I don’t feel like we won anything. We just bought ourselves the time that we had asked for,” said Brice Phillips, one of the family owners.

Phillips said he’s confident the Asian countries can meet the standards with the additional time and help.

The agreement settles a lawsuit filed last month by Phillips and other seafood importers over the bans. The settlement also postpones for at least six month a Jan. 1 ban on crabmeat from Sri Lanka.

The settlement, however, stops short of postponing a Jan. 1 ban on crabmeat from another top overseas source: Venezuela.

American crabmeat has largely been replaced by cheap foreign substitutes in crab cakes, soups and dips. State officials believe a majority of Maryland restaurants serve foreign crabmeat today. From Southeast Asia comes “swimming crab,” a different species. Venezuela supplies the same species of blue crab that swims in the Chesapeake Bay.

Swimming crab from Southeast Asia is generally pasteurized to make the long trip around the world. Venezuelan crabmeat often arrives fresh.

Maryland crab processors have long blamed the cheap Venezuelan imports for pricing out local crabmeat. And Chesapeake Bay processors have called for higher tariffs on Venezuela imports.

A ban on Venezuelan crabmeat was unexpected but welcome to Jack Brooks, of the historic J.M. Clayton Seafood Co. in Cambridge.

“It certainly will help our domestic industry, but again, we never advocated for a complete ban, just to level the economic playing field,” he said.

In addition to Phillips, the lawsuit was filed by the National Fisheries Institute Inc., a powerful seafood industry trade group. A spokesman celebrated the settlement, saying it avoids harm to American seafood companies and ensures the responsible implementation of the Marine Mammal Protect Act.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration determined that Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam did not meet the U.S. standards, for reasons such as using gill nets or other equipment that poses a threat to dolphins and whales, or for failing to send sufficient information about their fishing practices.

Venezuela was among only a handful of countries deemed out of compliance for not submitting any documents.

The settlement comes as environmental groups and American fishermen tried to intervene in the lawsuit and take sides against the crab importers. American fishermen, including Southern shrimpers, support the federal law because it requires foreign fishermen to follow the same rules that they do, such as limiting nets that snare whales and dolphins.

“There’s been a very unfair level of competition for countries that are not complying with these restrictions,” said Linda Behnken, a commercial fisherman and executive director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association, which filed to intervene in the case. “They’re also placing marine mammals at greater risk.”

The Marine Mammal Protection Act passed in 1972 with bipartisan support. President Richard Nixon signed the bill into law. The act outlaws the killing of whales, dolphins and polar bears without a permit.

The act goes further to direct the U.S. secretary of the treasury to ban foreign seafood caught by gear and methods that results in “incidental kill or incidental serious injury of ocean mammals in excess of United States standards.”

Foreign governments are responsible for demonstrating that their fisheries meet the U.S. standard. For decades, however, the import provisions went unenforced.

In 2014, environmental groups led by the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity sued the Obama Administration, asking the U.S. Court of International Trade to force the agencies to implement the law fully. Hundreds of thousands of dolphins, whales and seals were being killed each year as a bycatch of global commercial fisheries, environmental groups warned.

The National Marine Fisheries Service announced in August 2016 that officials would enforce the import provisions, but only after a grace period of five years to allow foreign nations to comply. Then came at least three more extensions and two more lawsuits before Jan. 1, 2026, was set as a date for a seafood ban. Now it is postponed again.

“We’ve had enough of the delays, enough of the one rule for our foreign competition and different, more exacting standards for American fishermen,” said Blake Price, of the Southern Shrimp Alliance. “Failed federal policy is driving the U.S. commercial fishing industry out of business.”