The U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) has decided to levy a same rate of 7.15 percent on 152 Indian shrimp exporters in its final results of the 15th administrative review of the antidumping duty order on frozen warmwater shrimp from India.
The review covered frozen shrimp sales into the U.S. by 154 exporters from India between 1 February, 2019 and 31 January, 2020. The dumping margin for the 152 companies is slightly lower than the rate of 7.57 percent announced by the DOC in its preliminary results in June this year.
The DOC’s conclusion also saw the rate unchanged at 4.73 percent for RSA Marines. But the margin for the other mandatory respondent, HN Indigos, was lowered to 10.39 percent, from 11.36 percent in the preliminary results.
The dumping rates in the 15th administrative review were the second-highest the DOC has ever imposed on Indian shrimp exporters’ sales into the U.S. since the start of the review in 2007, according to the Southern Shrimp Alliance.
In September this year, the U.S. Court of International Trade issued an order to sustain a DOC remand redetermination that levies an anti-dumping duty of 27.66 percent on the Elque Group, the highest-ever rate for an Indian shrimp exporter.
In the last three administrative reviews, the DOC has also included Indian exporters that were not individually examined in its earlier investigations, leading to the imposition of higher margins than before.
“The Southern Shrimp Alliance believes that the practice of limiting individual examination to a handful of Indian companies has allowed hundreds of other Indian shrimp exporters to ship to the United States with confidence that their own pricing practices will not be evaluated,” the SSA said. “This, in turn, has encouraged many Indian shrimp companies to increase their presence in the U.S. market with aggressive pricing strategies.”
India has been the biggest seller of shrimp to the U.S. since 2013. Its supply accounted for nearly 40 percent of the volume of frozen, non-breaded warmwater shrimp imported into the U.S. last year.
Photo courtesy of Arun David/Shutterstock
