The US Department of Commerce (DOC) has issued its final determinationin the 8th administrative review of the antidumping case on fishfillets, making an unlawful and politically motivated decision to levypunitive duty rates on Vietnamese fish exporters in excess of 100percent, according to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters andProducers (VASEP).
In a press release posted on its website onMarch 20, VASEP said this radical departure from eight years of legalprecedent relates to the use of a new surrogate country, Indonesia ,to value inputs of raw materials used in fish processing. BecauseVietnam is considered to be a “non market economy” by the USGovernment, the US DOC uses third country prices to value Vietnameseinputs.
Indonesia has been rejected in prior reviewsdue to poor data quality and lack of viable financial statements. TheDOC itself declared that Indonesia is not “economically comparable” toVietnam for a majority of the months covered by the review period,and then barred Vietnam from citing to this decision on theuntenable position that it was “new information.”
In thefinal results, the DOC based its valuation of whole live fish prices –the primary input in the fish fillet case – on one Indonesian governmentpricing study which showed radical fluctuations in pricing and was notbased on actual prices, but on calculated national averages from ahandful of districts.
The DOC engineered this punitive resultafter intense political lobbying on behalf of the US domesticindustry, the Catfish Farmers of America (CFA). There was no attempt tohide the multiple high-level meetings and lobbying efforts made onbehalf of the CFA directly to the DOC, VASEP said.
It clearlydraws into question the fairness of the process and the alleged“neutral” nature of the DOC decision-makers. Vietnamese respondents havefully cooperated with DOC through multiple on-site verifications andthe filing of full and complete responses and data over nearly 18months.
For the past eight years, the DOC has consistentlyused Bangladesh to value Vietnamese fish inputs, continually rejectingthe Philippines and Indonesia due to the poor quality of thepricing data, the lack of publicly available financial data, and thefact that these countries have no exports to other countries. Nomaterial changes had been made to these facts in this review.
Bangladesh is farming Pangasius Hypophthalmus in ponds likeVietnam . Producers in the two countries share the reasonablycomparable production cost and revenue. While Indonesia farms fivedifferent catfish species. Thus, there is even no specific data in itsoutput of Pangasius Hypophthalmus.
In fact, the DOC continuedto follow this well-reasoned policy even through the most recent newshipper review, published only a few weeks ago.
There was norecord evidence in the 8 th review that Indonesia had improved itsposition as a viable surrogate country or that the data was any morereliable. We must therefore believe that domestic politics played a veryobvious role in this decision, VASEP emphasised.
The finalduty rates for the reviewed companies – although not effective until afinal determination is made – average between 0.19 USD per kilo and 1.34USD per kilo, with all other separate rates companies receiving a 0.77USD per kg duty rate. These exceed 100 percent in additional duties.These rates effectively bar the reviewed Vietnamese exporters from theUS market and are punitive, not remedial.
VASEP, togetherwith individual fish exporters and the relevant trade remedy bureaus ofthe Vietnamese Government are studying all options in addressing thispunitive result and its legality under US law and the WTO. Further,there will be a comprehensive review of its impact on bi-lateralrelations.-VNA
