Stevens - the American Seafood Distributors Association president - said the "zeroing" strategy guarantees that dumping margins can be used against foreign shipments. "The whole process just defies logic," he said.
This is "absolutely the worst time to be placing more taxes on the shrimp industry," said Brian Wynn, who is CEO of Rubicon Resources in Los Angeles, a major Thai shrimp importer, according to an article in the Asia Africa Intelligence Wire (January, 2005). "Together with the tsunami, there are real questions about the viability of the Thai shrimp industry."
Meanwhile, on the subject of the tsunami: "Officials within both sectors say that the World Trade Organization, international aid groups, and some of the stricken countries want the U.S. To drop tariffs or forgive trade violations" (Patterson, 2005) from nations hit by the big wave, according to the Greensboro News & Record. But "if providing aid means losing jobs," the article continues, the North Carolina Fisheries Association says "no" to lifting tariffs on the nations punished by the DoC.
An article in Business Week Online (Magnusson, 2004), takes a rather harsh and cynical look at the tariffs being imposed on foreign shrimp suppliers. "What do you do when your industry is hit by imports?" Magnusson asks. He then answers his own question: "Flout international law, undercut a free-trade deal, then sock it to consumers."
Magnusson runs through the scenario that has unfolded: "U.S. shrimp fishermen file a complaint" with the federal government in an effort to raise "import duties - and prices - on imported shrimp"; then "friendly state officeholders lend a hand with subsidies for the industry." Following those moves, the shrimp fishermen lobby the federal government to "shift the resulting millions of dollars in import duties from the U.S. Treasury back into their own pockets."
Beyond the fact that the American consumers will pay higher prices - in Magnusson's...
trade relations with Vietnam and other developing nations." The Bush administration is "constantly exhorting" the Vietnamese to "abandon state-controlled enterprises in favor of free-market economies," Magnusson writes.
The U.S. Government has already "done wrong by Vietnam while preaching the free-trade gospel," Magnusson continues. In 2002, the "GOP-controlled Congress" passed legislation re-labeling Vietnamese catfish imports "Basa Tra." It seems that "bizarre" re-naming of catfish resulted from loud complaints from fishermen in Mississippi, home state of then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. As a result of re-naming catfish "Basa Tra" - a name so foreign-sounding that sales of the Vietnamese catfish never got off the ground - the U.S. has already shown contempt for the Vietnamese.
The 70,000 U.S. shrimpers, meantime, will likely "reap an added windfall" from American consumers resulting from the Byrd Amendment, which allows industries that are victorious in antidumping cases to "receive the taxes imposed on offending imports."
References
Asia Africa Intelligence Wire (2005, January 7). U.S. Upholds Tariffs on Shrimp Imports
From India, Five Others. Retrieved from Asia Pulse; Article # A126813907.
Economist (2004). Shrimp Wars. 372, 26. Academic Search Premier Database
ISSN: 0013-0613).
Magers, Phil. (2004). Analysis: Shrimp Tariffs Spark New Charges. UPI Perspectives.
Magnusson, Paul. (2004). Peeled and Eaten by U.S. Shrimpers. Business Week Online.
Academic Search Premier Database (Accession Number: 13970997).
Patterson, Donald W. (2005, February 1). Tsunami "aid" stirs critics. Greensboro News
Record, Retrieved February 4, 2005, from: http://www.news-record.com/cgi-bin/print_it.pl.
