A Louisiana crawfish supplier and other food companies on Wednesday sued the U.S. government and several insurance companies for failing to collect antidumping duties on crawfish imports and other foods from China.
The class-action complaint, filed by Beaucoup Crawfish (d.b.a. Riceland Crawfish) of Eunice, La., et al, alleges Hartford Insurance Co. and other insurance providers are liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in uncollected duties, intended to prevent harm against competing domestic industries.
The plaintiffs say the insurance companies issued surety bonds to Chinese suppliers to clear their products' entry into the United States and are therefore responsible for up to USD 723 million (EUR 549.1 million) of antidumping duties assessed over the past six years for fresh garlic, canned mushrooms, pure honey and crawfish tail meat. The plaintiffs claim that only 7 percent of the total tariffs have been collected.
Domestic production represents only a fraction of the U.S. crawfish supply. Despite the tariffs, U.S. crawfish imports increased 2.8 percent from 2006 to 2007, to 14.6 million pounds, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. China accounts for the vast majority of total U.S. crawfish imports.
"These imports inflicted grievous injury on plaintiffs and class members by greatly depressing the market price for their competing domestically made products, thereby forcing plaintiffs and class members to lose domestic sales to these imports and to sell their goods in this country at prices and quantities substantially below those that would have prevailed in absence of those imports," the lawsuit stated.
"As a result, plaintiffs and class members lost substantial portions of the U.S. market and were deprived of hundreds of millions of dollars in sales revenue they would have otherwise received. This was precisely the type of injury to plaintiffs and the class that each of the China NSR (new shipper administrative review) Orders was intended to - but clearly did not - prevent."
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York; co-plaintiffs include the Sioux Honey Association of Sioux City, Iowa; Adee Honey Farms of Bruce, S.D.; Monterey Mushrooms of Watsonville, Calif.; and The Garlic Co. of Bakersfield, Calif. The plaintiffs say they were excluded from the process U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) uses to consider the validity of antidumping claims.
The defendants include CBP, the U.S. Department of Commerce, six branches of The Hartford Co., Aegis Security Insurance Co., American Contractors Indemnity Co., American Home Assurance Co., American Motorists Insurance Co., Great American Alliance Insurance Co., Great American Insurance Co., International Fidelity Insurance Co., Lincoln General Insurance Co., Washington International Insurance Co. and XL Specialty Insurance Co.
The U.S. International Trade Commission announced in December that antidumping tariffs on Chinese crawfish tail meat would be renewed for another five years. The ITC ruled that revoking the tariffs, enacted in 1997 when the Crawfish Processors Alliance won its antidumping case against foreign Chinese crawfish exporters, would "likely lead to continuation or recurrence of material injury" to Louisiana's crawfish industry.
April 9, 2009
