The general secretary of the Vietnamese Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) on Monday criticized the methods with which the United States calculated its recent tariff increase on pangasius exports.
Truong Dinh Hoe said it is inappropriate to use the Philippines’ pangasius industry as a comparison in order to calculate production costs that influence a long-standing antidumping tariff on Vietnamese pangasius.
“It’s not reasonable to impose the figures collected from 36 breeding ponds with a total of 12 [metric] tons per year in the Philippines with the breeding farms totaling 1 million tons of pangasius in Vietnam,” Hoe said.
Hoe added that fish feed costs are roughly four times higher in the Philippines, where production and management costs are much higher.
VASEP last week protested the U.S. move to increase tariffs retroactively, saying the move is motivated by the U.S. catfish industry. In July, the trade group Catfish Farmers of America held a press conference in Washington, D.C., to claim that Vietnamese pangasius, which wholesales for approximately 33 percent less than U.S. catfish, is unfit to consume.
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