*EPF413 01/22/2004
Commerce Initiates Investigation of Shrimp Imports from Six Markets
(Advances two other antidumping cases on shopping bags, alcohol) (570)

By Andrzej Zwaniecki
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- The Commerce Department has initiated an antidumping investigation on shrimp imports from six countries worth more than $2 billion a year.

The department announced January 21 that the case concerns imports of frozen and canned warm-water shrimp from Brazil, Ecuador, India, China, Thailand and Vietnam.

In 2002 U.S. imports of those kinds of shrimp from the six markets amounted to $2,353 million with Thailand and Vietnam the biggest exporters.

Imposition of antidumping duties requires final affirmative determinations both from the Commerce Department that dumping occurred and from the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) that the imports injured or threatened U.S. industry.

The U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) is expected to issue its preliminary injury determination in February.

American shrimp farmers, who formed an ad hoc committee to file a case, have claimed that the foreign exporters dumped shrimp on the American market, depressing sales of U.S.-harvested shrimps from $1.25 billion in 2000 to $559 million in 2002.

In the week of January 11 six senators from Louisiana, Texas, and other states sent a letter to Secretary of Commerce Don Evans asking him to take action against alleged dumping, which they said was hurting the U.S. shrimp industry.

Vietnamese shrimp exporters condemned the Commerce decision and a state-run Vietnamese news agency said earlier in January that an U.S. antidumping action against shrimp imports would be an "expression of U.S. trade protectionism and discrimination, which contradicts the Vietnam-U.S. bilateral trade agreement," according to news reports.

Seafood is the second major source of foreign earnings for Vietnam after crude oil.

In July 2003, when the USITC imposed antidumping duties on imports of Vietnamese frozen catfish fillets, that decision also was met with protests from Vietnamese officials.

Dumping is the import of goods at a price below the home-market or a third-country price or below the cost of production. A dumping margin represents by how much the fair-value price exceeds the dumped price.

The Commerce Department also advanced two other antidumping investigations on imports from three Asian countries.

In a January 21 preliminary affirmative determination the department ruled that imports of tetrahydrofurfuryl alcohol from China were dumped on the U.S. market and calculated the dumping margins at 31.33 percent.

In 2003 U.S. imports of tetrahydrofurfuryl alcohol from China amounted to $484,520.

The day earlier the department announced preliminary affirmative determinations in another dumping case concerning plastic shopping bags from China, Malaysia and Thailand. It ruled that those bags were sold in the U.S. market at less than fair value and calculated the dumping margins ranging from 0.12 to 80.52 percent for bags from China, 0.14 to 101.74 percent for those from Malaysia, and 2.84 to 122.88 percent for those from Thailand.

In 2002 U.S. imports of carrier bags from the three countries were valued at $183.5 million.

Commerce is expected to make a final ruling in April in the alcohol case and in June in the shopping bag case.

In the meantime the U.S. Customs bureau will collect cash or a bond equal to the calculated dumping margins on any subject imports. The money would be returned in the event of a negative determination.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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