Protest against anti-dumping tax on Vietnamese pangasius fish
On September 5, the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) issued a notice protesting the tax rate in the US Department of Commerce's (DOC) ninth preliminary decision on anti-dumping tax administrative review (POR9) on pangasius exported from Vietnam to the US.
Processing tra/basa fish fillets for export at the Tien River Seafood Factory (Dong Thap). Photo: Dinh Hue - VNA
VASEP requested DOC to be consistent in using Bangladesh as a surrogate country to calculate the input value for Vietnamese pangasius in the final decision of the 8th and 9th administrative reviews as in previous years.
On September 4, 2013, DOC announced the preliminary decision of the 9th administrative review (POR9), the period from August 1, 2011 to July 31, 2012, on anti-dumping tax (CBPG) on frozen pangasius fillets imported from Vietnam to the US market. Accordingly, the anti-dumping tax (CBPG) on frozen pangasius fillets imported from Vietnam in the preliminary decision of POR9 for 2 mandatory respondent enterprises is 0.42 USD/kg and 2.15 USD/kg and for voluntary respondent enterprises is 0.99 USD/kg.
VASEP said that the association was very dissatisfied with the DOC's sudden change in the way it selected the replacement country, and at the same time protested the tax rate in the DOC's preliminary decision for the 9th administrative review of anti-dumping tax. Previously, VASEP and other businesses exporting pangasius to the US filed a lawsuit against the DOC's final POR8 decision to the US Court of International Trade (US CIT), requesting a review of the accuracy of the DOC's calculations, forcing the DOC to re-select a more reasonable replacement country and recalculate the tax rate. CIT accepted the lawsuit and requested US Customs to temporarily suspend the collection of anti-dumping tax from businesses according to the final conclusion of POR8 until the final judgment of this court.
According to VASEP, the decision to choose
According to the US Department of Commerce's procedures, Vietnamese tra and basa fish exporting enterprises will have 4 months to review and appeal the decision of the DOC's 9th administrative review. |
Even according to VASEP, the decision to choose Indonesia as a replacement country contradicted the DOC's own decision on November 8, 2012, when it announced a list of 6 countries that would be used as replacement countries to calculate the anti-dumping tax rate for POR9, in which Indonesia was not on the list of 6 countries. The DOC itself admitted that
Through successive administrative reviews, DOC has consistently chosen
Speaking to VNA reporters on September 4, a representative of the Vietnam Trade Office in the US said that this was a surprising and contradictory decision. The US Department of Commerce decided to choose Indonesia as a replacement country to calculate the dumping margin and apply anti-dumping tax, even though Indonesia was not on the list of countries announced by the US Department of Commerce in November 2011. According to the Vietnam Trade Office in the US, Indonesia is not a similar country to base the tax calculation in this case in terms of economic conditions as well as the characteristics of the farming and processing industry of tra and basa fish.
According to (News) - LC
