Long-standing US antidumping duties on shrimp from four Asian nations are expected to be renewed in early 2023.
This comes after the US International Trade Commission voted unanimously on requests from the US shrimp industry calling for the renewal on antidumping duty orders on warmwater shrimp from China, India, Thailand and Vietnam were “adequate."
Under a sunset review, a process for the renewal of antidumping duties must be undertaken every five years. A sunset review is an evaluation of the need for the continuation of a program or an agency. It allows for an assessment of the effectiveness and performance of the program or agency.
It will now move forward for full review.
The US shrimp industry, including fishing groups, processors and others, called for antidumping duties in the early 2000s because it felt imported product was being dumped on the US market at below-market value, harming the domestic industry's ability to compete with the cheaper imports.
At that time, the European Union was regularly banning entry of shipments of Chinese shrimp because of levels of banned chemicals in the shrimp, prompting exporters from the Asian nation to switch focus to the US market, according to John Williams, executive director at the Southern Shrimp Alliance (SSA), a coalition of shrimp fishermen, processors and others operating in the eight warmwater shrimp producing states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas.
In order for antidumping duties to be renewed, the US shrimp industry has to show that imports continue to harm its interests.
It is the third sunset review to be instigated since antidumping duties were originally imposed.
The first step in this latest process was to ensure the domestic industry wanted to keep the tariff in place, something that has now been done, Williams said.
"At some point, I'm hoping early next year that the International Trade Commission will vote to continue the sunset review," Williams told IntraFish.
Earlier this summer, the US Department of Commerce informed the commission that no foreign industry had provided an “adequate” response to that agency’s notice of initiation of sunset reviews.
The commission will now issue questionnaires to US shrimp fishermen, farmers, and processors in order to obtain information necessary to evaluate whether the domestic shrimp industry will be materially injured if the trade relief is removed.
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