The Bush administration yesterday moved to limit shrimp imports from four of the world’s largest exporters. Combined with a ruling earlier this month, prices will be raised on nearly 75 percent of all U.S. shrimp imports.
U.S. shrimpers said the ruling would help preserve their businesses and some 70,000 jobs in the United States.
“The industry’s very survival depends upon it,” said Eddie Gordon, president of the Southern Shrimp Alliance, a U.S. industry group that brought the initial complaint against the imports.
Restaurants, retailers and other importers complained that the decision would simply make shrimp more expensive for consumers.
“This is a case of the current administration imposing a new food tax on millions of Americans,” said Wally Stevens, president of Slade Gorton Co., a seafood distribution company in Boston, and head of an industry task force fighting the new fees.
The Commerce Department yesterday said Brazil, Ecuador, India and Thailand were selling their products in the United States at unfairly low rates. Companies from the four nations will face tariffs ranging to 67.8 percent, less than the industry had requested.
The Bush administration earlier this month targeted China and Vietnam’s shrimp exports with preliminary duties.
The six countries combined supplied roughly two-thirds of the shrimp consumed by Americans, according to government figures. In 2003, the U.S. bought $2.66 billion in canned and frozen shrimp from the group, about three-quarters of all imports.
The preliminary decision quickly puts up duties, though a final Commerce Department decision is not expected until December, followed by an ITC ruling that could lock in trade barriers for at least five years and funnel the tariff revenue to the companies that brought the complaint.
The anti-dumping laws are often used by U.S. industries threatened by foreign competition, on products ranging from industrial chemicals to steel to color televisions.
The Bush administration has used them as it seeks to maintain or build public and congressional support for free trade.
“Enforcement of our trade laws is consistent with our free-trade commitments,” said James Jochum, assistant commerce secretary for import administration.
U.S. shrimpers filed their initial complaint last year against six nations.
Shrimp since 2001 has been the country’s most popular seafood, but U.S. shrimpers say they have not benefited by the rising popularity.
Rather, they have been forced to lower prices for their wild-caught shrimp to meet competition from foreign shrimp that is usually produced on farms.
The Commerce Department yesterday said the foreign competitors are selling their products below fair price.
The targeted countries say they simply are more efficient than U.S. producers.
“We are sure that we are not dumping products in the U.S.,” Nuntawan Sakuntanaga, Thailand’s deputy director-general for foreign trade, said earlier this month.
Shrimp farmers in Thailand and other nations import U.S. soybeans to use as feed, and have threatened to retaliate, prompting concerns of a trade war.
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