The US continues to impose countervailing duties on shrimp imported from Vietnam.

In the early morning of August 14th (Vietnam time), the US Department of Commerce officially announced its final ruling in the anti-subsidy investigation against frozen warmwater shrimp imported from Vietnam.

Accordingly, the US Department of Commerce affirmed that Vietnamese producers and processors of certain frozen shrimp products received subsidies from the government and therefore decided to impose countervailing duties on Vietnamese shrimp. However, the duty rates imposed by the US Department of Commerce in the final ruling were generally lower than those in the preliminary ruling at the end of May.

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According to the US Department of Commerce's ruling, with two mandatory respondents, Minh Quy Company was subject to a 7.88% tariff, an increase from the 5.08% in the preliminary ruling; meanwhile, the tariff for Nha Trang Seafoods Company's products was sharply reduced to only 1.15% from the 7.05% in the preliminary ruling. The general tariff for all other Vietnamese companies was adjusted down from 6.07% to 4.52%.

This tariff will officially take effect from the date the U.S. Department of Commerce's ruling is published in the Federal Register. The U.S. Department of Commerce has also officially ordered the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to collect the corresponding countervailing duty amount from Vietnamese businesses exporting shrimp to the U.S. market starting from June 4, 2013.

Under U.S. law, the U.S. International Trade Commission is simultaneously investigating an anti-subsidy case against shrimp imports from Vietnam and six other countries. If the International Trade Commission concludes that Vietnamese government subsidies do not cause or threaten to cause material harm to U.S. businesses, the case will be terminated entirely, and all deposits collected or intended to be collected from Vietnamese businesses will be refunded or waived. However, if the Commission decides otherwise, the U.S. Department of Commerce is expected to issue an anti-subsidy duty order on October 3rd.

According to the final ruling of the US Department of Commerce, Indonesia and Thailand were exempted from paying tariffs, but the countervailing duties imposed on the remaining defendants in this case were also very high. Specifically: China 18.16%; Ecuador from 10.13% to 13.51%; India from 10.54% to 11.14%; and Malaysia from 10.80% to 54.50%.

Although some of the tariffs imposed by the U.S. Department of Commerce in its final ruling on the anti-subsidy case against warm-water shrimp from Vietnam were reduced compared to the preliminary decision and significantly lower than the tariffs imposed on the vast majority of other defendants in the case, these anti-subsidy tariffs remain an unfair decision, a double taxation measure, and have a major impact on the livelihoods of more than 600,000 Vietnamese shrimp farmers and processors in this sector.

According to (VTV News)-PH