The US Department of Commerce (DOC) recently announced its final decision on the seventh preliminary result of administrative review (POR7) for Vietnamese tra and basa fish exported to the US from August 2009 to July 2010. According to this decision, Vietnam fish exporters will enjoy lower anti-dumping taxes of 0.8-1 per cent on their products exported to the US, instead of a 15 per cent tax rate under the previous decision of the US Department of Commerce (DOC).
The DOC, choosing Bangladesh as the sole replacement country in calculating the anti-dumping rate, decided to impose a zero rate on Vietnam’s Vinh Hoan company’s products and US$0.03 per kilo on 12 other companies. This offers good news to local tra and basa fish exporters, since in September of 2011, the DOC had decided that only Vinh Hoan Company would enjoy zero tax rate, while the duty for the others surge by 28 times, from two to 56 cents a kilo, equivalent to a 15 per cent tax rate.
Though this result does not reflect the fact that Vietnamese exporters do not dump their products in the US market, it shows that the efforts of relevant agencies and local enterprises eventually bear fruit.
The export turnover of Vietnamese frozen tra and basa fillets to the US amounted to US$332 million in 2011, with the market share picking up to 18 per cent, creating jobs for one million local farmers.
With a total over 1 million hectares for aquaculture, the Mekong Delta is considered an inner strength of the whole country that makes up over 70 per cent of area and 90 per cent of seafood export and farming output, including 85 kinds of aquatic and seafood products exported to 163 markets.
Vietnam started exporting tra and basa fish to the US in 1996 after the economic embargo was removed. After the first years with low consumption, the export volumes of local fish fillets to the US had surged sharply since 2002. As of 2001-end, the amount of export frozen fish fillets shot up to nearly 21,000 tonnes, or 20 times higher than in 1998.
Soon after the initial success of Vietnamese tra and basa fish on the US market, the first anti-dumping lawsuit against local fish products took place on June 28, 2002 when the Catfish Farmers of America (CFA) accused the products imported from Vietnam of being sold at lower prices than the reasonable values in the US, causing losses to US catfish producers.
The US catfish farmers and processors argued that their purpose was to ensure fair trade. The Vietnamese side, on the other hand, deemed this lawsuit an embodiment of the US production protection concept by setting up trade barriers, which had earlier emerged from the disputes over the name "catfish".
Vietnamese fish products have faced the possibility of being imposed anti-dumping taxes seven times in the last eight years, causing damages to local farmers and exporters, as well as the US traders and consumers.
Vietnam can see big opportunities not only in the US market, but all over the world such as Europe and Japan. European importers tried to delay conducting negotiations with Vietnamese exporters, because they believed that the anti-dumping tax rates would be still high, which would allow them to force the prices down. Now, as the tax rates have been slashed, Vietnamese exporters would have larger markets; which means that they have the advantages to re-negotiate the prices.
Huong Ly
Vietnamese
