Sniping continues in shrimp tariff drama

The Shrimp Task Force on Monday criticized wht it called "reckless rhetoric" used by the Southern Shrimp Alliance (SSA) President Eddit Gordon contained in a letter to Commerce Secretary Donald Evans regarding the threat to the American Soybean Association caused by the SSA's antidumping petition against imported shrimp from six countries.

In its own letter to Secretary Evans, the ASA warned that the outcome of the shrimp antidumping petition could "have a direct and serious impact" on the American soybean industry in terms of lost business by U.S. soybean farmers and the loss of exports of American soybean products to Thailand and China.

American soybean farmers are concerned because a group of agricultural associations representing the vast majority of U.S. soybean consumes in Thailand has threatened to not buy U.S. soybean imports should the U.S. place an antidumping tax on imported shrimp from Thailand. The soybean farmers also are concerned about lost business from other shrimp exports, such as China, the largest foreign consumer of U.S. soybean products.

In his letter to Gordon, Shrimp Task Force Chairman Wally Stevens stated that he was "surprised and disappointed" at the SSA's reaction to soybean industry concerns over potential lost exports resulting from a backlash over antidumping duties on shrimp imports to the United States.

"Perhaps you are not aware that the Commerce Department's very own mathematics that account for all or most of the preliminary duty levels have been ruled illegal by the WTO itself," wrote Stevens. "I refer to the DOC's obviously unfair and discretionary 'zeroing' methodology, bu which any sales to the U.S. that are at high prices than foreign sales, and thus woud reduce dumping margins, are not counted in the duty calculation. Zeroing helps reate or inflate dumping margins, as the margins are based only on the comparisons of a cherry-picked subset of lower priced sales.

The WTO has already ruled that zeroing violates international trade rules on how dumping duties are supposed to be calculated, Stevens said.

"The fact is that wihtout applying the illegal zeroing methodology, nearly all of the dumping margins found by the Department of Commerce would disappear," Stevens wrote. "It is no wonder that Thailand and other countries are outraged over the shrimp cas when the duties can only be found using "funny math" already ruled illegal by the WTO."

Stevens also labeled as a "smokescreen" Gordon's assertions that both foreign shrimpers and domestic soybean producers have benefited from government subsidies.

"The domestic shrimp industry has been tapping U.S., state, and local governments for millions of dollard in so-called disaster assistance for years, and has only been able to finance this multi-million dollar attack on trade thanks to such payments," he said. "The SSA knows very well that those supporting this case stand to receive annual payments under the Byrd Amendment that could reach into hte hundreds of millions of dollars if duties are actually imposted on shrimp imports, despite the fact that these subsidies have also been conclusively ruled illegal by the WTO. Let's be honest, this is where the food tax dollars that SSA wants to impose on the U.S. economy would end up."

from The Wave.