The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is expected to provide a determination in October on whether Vietnam’s leading shrimp company, Minh Phu Seafood, and its subsidiaries have evaded the antidumping duty order on certain frozen warmwater shrimp from India through its imports of shrimp into the U.S.
CBP’s Trade Remedy Law Enforcement Directorate (TRLED) under its Office of Trade on 9 October, 2019, initiated the investigation under the Enforce and Protect Act (EAPA), following an allegation submitted by the Ad Hoc Shrimp Trade Enforcement Committee (AHSTEC), a coalition of U.S. shrimp industry members and commercial fishing industry organizations.
CBP was initially expected to conclude the investigation on 26 April this year. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the decision has been delayed to the end of October, Minh Phu Chairman and CEO Le Van Quang told the company’s stakeholders at the company’s annual meeting on 27 June.
Quang said Minh Phu had to review all of its production, import, and export activities to answer a “huge” number of questions posed by CBP. Lawyers in the U.S. hired by Minh Phu have high expectations that CBP will judge in favor of the Vietnamese producer, as “we did not do anything wrong,” the chairman said.
Minh Phu’s business results last year were partly affected by the investigation, as the company had to mobilize its human resources to fulfill requests from the U.S. authorities, Quang said.
The allegations against Minh Phu began when U.S. Representative Darin LaHood (R-IL) in a letter on 17 May last year requested CBP launch an investigation into allegations the company had possibly been evading U.S. anti-dumping duties on shrimp from India. The letter alleged that Minh Phu purchased a large amount of frozen shrimp from India, processed it at a “minimum" level in Vietnam, and then went on to sell it through a subsidiary to the U.S., MSeafood, as a Vietnamese product.
In response, at a press conference on 7 June, 2019, Quang said his company was not involved in any evasion of anti-dumping duties in the U.S. market.
Photo courtesy of Minh Phu Seafood
