U.S. Congress members request fair decision on shrimp case
Eight U.S. Congress members sent letters to the U.S. Commerce Secretary Nov. 18, urging him to ensure a fair and balanced final decision in the shrimp anti-dumping case against Vietnam and five other countries.
In their letters to Secretary Donald Evans, two U.S. Senators and six Representatives said that Mr. Evans should make sure that the Department of Commerce (DOC) took a fair and balanced approach to the pending final determination of anti-dumping duties on shrimp imports from Vietnam, China, Thailand, India, Ecuador and Brazil.
The letters also expressed concerns over the DOC's discretionary methodology, declared illegal by the World Trade Organization (WTO), known as “zeroing”, by which any shrimp sales to the U.S. that are at higher prices than foreign sales, and thus would reduce dumping margins, are not counted in the duty calculation. It may unfairly create or inflate dumping margins for most of the foreign shrimp companies under probes, the letters said.
These letters come on top of another batch of letters sent to the DOC recently signed by a total of 18 lawmakers expressing concerns about the anti-dumping petitions and its impact on the U.S. economy.
On the same day, the Shrimp Task Force (STF) of U.S. trade watchdog Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition (CITAC) placed a full-page ad in Hill Magazine highlighting the inherent bias and damaging effects that zeroing has on the credibility of anti-dumping investigations conducted by DOC.
Zeroing is a discretionary trade policy choice inherited by the U.S. government, which it could readily eliminate, said the STF.
Meanwhile, the WTO twice raised objections against the DOC methodology, according to the Washington Post magazine.
On July 6 this year, the DOC said in a preliminary ruling that Vietnam sold shrimp to the American market at below-market prices, and Vietnamese shrimp exporters must be subjected to import duties with margins ranging from 12.11 to 93.13 per cent.
The DOC is set to decide final dumping duties for China and Vietnam by Nov. 29, 2004, and for Thailand, India, Ecuador, and Brazil by Dec. 17.
Source: U.S. Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition (CITAC)
Story from Thanh Nien News
Published: 19 November, 2004, 22:30:27 (GMT+7)
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