It's not just the US that is against whales, dolphins and porpoises being hunted. The international whaling commission is a global body charged with conservation and whaling management. Norway, Iceland and Japan are the only countries that refuse to follow the guidelines that every other country that has whaled follows. These are the only countries that do commercial whaling anymore. All the other countries allow for subsistence whaling. That is, they allow native peoples to whale for food and for cultural reasons.
Japan just whales because...honestly, I don't really know. They can't sell 3/4 of a massively reduced hunt (due to the 2011 tsunami) and can sell even less of a normal hunt. This is in Japan. Selling whales to other countries is not allowed. Japan has no cultural reason for massive whaling. They did small subsistence whaling prior to WWII, then ate whale and used the oil and such during WWII because they were starving and not allowed to trade. They haven't had a need for whale products or whale meat in so many years. They give money to other countries to have them join the commission so they can influence the vote and change the rules of the commission so they can sell whale products to other countries. A really large portion of their by-catch (whales they kill accidentally) are endangered and threatened whale species.
I mean, sure, if you feel it's ok they go around killing whales for meat they can't sell or feed to anyone and kill a bunch of endangered animals in the process, then go right ahead and think that's ok. It's the same as thinking it's ok to kill orangutans when illegal palm plantations are planted for the palm oil in your food.
Norway has the same problems. No one wants to eat the whale meat and they can't legally export the meat or the blubber though they do with Japan, or try to. Japan can't get rid of their own so they don't want Norway's. They had a huge stockpile of blubber at one point and tried to sell it as a good food then they found out it was really high in toxins compared to whales from other areas. Pregnant women and nursing mothers were told to not eat it at all. Most of the excess went to pet food. If you think that it's worth decimating whale populations to feed your dogs and cats food that is high in toxins, well, that's great.
Iceland makes most of its money from exporting whale meet to Japan. They blow money supporting whalers. They've killed so many minke whales that they are losing 10% of the number of whale watching tourists yearly because there are no longer whales to watch. That is a 4 million dollar business for Iceland, which is a small small country. They have thousands of tons of fin whales in the freezer that they can't sell. Whale meat consumption is up in Iceland a bit through marketing, but it's also heavily sold to tourists as "this is what Iceland eats" when it isn't what most Icelanders eat.
Greenland is now turning to commercial whaling, and that is heavily fueled by tourism. But hey, it's ok to feed tourists whales to make them feel like real Greenlanders.
Speaking of eating whales, in general it's dangerous to eat whale, dolphin and porpoise. Nearly all of them are heavily contaminated by mercury and other toxins. In the Faroe islands where they do eat these on a regular basis, babies are born with neurological problems and adults come down with higher than normal levels of Parkinson's. So eating these foods gives you disabled babies and causes you to die an early and painful death that you didn't need to in the first place. Whale oil isn't used anymore. No one uses whale bones in corsets, and it was never bone to begin with. Since this stuff is so dangerous to eat, why kill it anymore? Every country that does it (Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Japan) is struggling to make money off a toxic product.
