More battles ahead over US anti-dumping duties on Vietnamese shrimp

16/11/2018 12:00 - 417 Views

Thai Union Group's US frozen seafood importing division, Tri-Union Frozen Products, the Mazzetta Company, the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers and a long list of Vietnamese exporters and US importers of seafood have been dealt yet another defeat and the US domestic shrimp industry a victory in their ongoing fight over the way the US Commerce Department (DOC) calculates anti-dumping duties.

But the war over the fees charged on Vietnamese shrimp is not over.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last week summarily affirmed a 2016 decision by the US Court of International Trade (CIT) in relation to the final results of the DOC’s eighth administrative review of the anti-dumping duty order on frozen Vietnamese shrimp imported between February 1, 2012 and January 31, 2013. The CIT decision, which was opposed by the importers and supported by the domestic shrimp industry, affirmed the DOC’s increase of anti-dumping duties imposed on shrimp from Vietnamese seafood exporter Stapimex from 9.75% to 10.48% and on shrimp imported from all other independent Vietnamese companies participating in the review from 6.37% to 6.94%.

The only way now for Tri-Union, which trades as Chicken of the Sea Frozen Foods, Mazzetta and other companies to further contest the added fees charged on Vietnamese shrimp is to petition the US Supreme Court to hear the case or to petition the federal circuit for a rehearing or an en banc review, explained Nathan Maandig Rickard, a partner at Picard, Kentz & Rowe, in Washington, D.C. If they don’t, the DOC will next issue instructions to US Customs and Border Protection to collect the additional anti-dumping duties, he said.

Rickard counsels the Southern Shrimp Alliance, a group that represents harvesters and processors of wild-caught US shrimp, and the Ad Hoc Shrimp Trade Action Committee, which regularly intervenes on behalf of domestic shrimpers in trade matters.  

The importers and exporters had argued, during a hearing held two days earlier, on Nov. 6, that the anti-dumping duties should have been set based more on prices paid for frozen white vannamei from Indonesia rather than black tiger shrimp from Bangladesh. DOC had deemed Indonesia to not be a comparable economy.

“We think they should use the white for everything … because the record demonstrates that there is a significant price difference between white and black species,” Robert Gosselink, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney representing the importers, argued to the panel of judges during the roughly 30-minute hearing.

A DOC attorney countered successfully that the agency didn’t have enough information about the price of a matching count size of Indonesian shrimp to use it for comparison purposes nor the cost of labor and other key data points in the country.

13th review now underway

Even if the importers don’t appeal their case further to the Supreme Court, the ruling by the federal appeals court won’t likely be the last regarding anti-dumping duties applied on Vietnamese shrimp.  

Since the DOC first enacted anti-dumping duty orders against Vietnamese shrimp in February 2005, it has been holding administrative reviews annually to decide duty rates and cash deposit requirements. The agency is conducting its 13th such review now on shrimp imported between Feb. 1, 2017 and Jan. 31, 2018.

The Chicago, Illinois-area Mazzetta, on Oct. 10, filed a lawsuit against the DOC over the way it calculated anti-dumping rates used in the 12th administrative review, using a similar argument to the one made over the eighth administrative review. Mazzetta said the DOC acted inappropriately by using the values for black tiger shrimp from Bangladesh as a "surrogate" in determining duty rates imposed on Vietnamese exporter Sao Ta Foods Joint Stock Company, otherwise known as Fimex VN, on imports received between Feb. 1, 2016 and Jan. 31, 2017.

Again, Mazzetta is arguing the agency should've used Indonesian vannamei prices as its surrogate instead.

Also, Sao Ta Foods, on Oct. 1, filed a lawsuit at the US CIT challenging the final results and included additional aspects of Commerce’s determination.

In addition to the lawsuits brought against the eighth and 12th administrative reviews, both the US domestic shrimp industry and the Vietnamese shrimp importers/exporters have also challenged the 10th administrative review, dealing with anti-dumping duties applied to shrimp imported between Feb. 1, 2014 and Jan. 31, 2015, in another case brought before the CIT.

The CIT remanded the final results back to DOC for further consideration. A response by DOC to objections to the remand re-determination to the CIT is due in December.
November 16, 2018
Source: Under Current News
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