ITC Erred in Interchanging Imported, US-Made Shrimp, Vietnamese Exporters Tell CIT
A Vietnamese shrimp exporter trade group challenged the International Trade Commission's finding that frozen warmwater shrimp from Ecuador, India, Indonesia and Vietnam injured the U.S. industry. Filing a complaint on Feb. 21, the group challenged the ITC's finding of significant price underselling and on the "interchangeability between" farm-raised and wild-caught shrimp as evidence of the "degree of competition between" imports and domestic production and the "consequent effect on prices" (Shrimp Committee of the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers v. United States, CIT # 25-00032).
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The commission cumulated the imports from the four nations and found that the volume of imports was significant and caused significant price effects. The ITC rejected a claim from the plaintiff, the Shrimp Committee of the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers, that competition between imports and the domestic product was attenuated by "almost all" imports being farm-raised and almost all of the domestic product being wild-caught.
In its complaint, the trade group said the ITC gave "no reasoned basis for its conclusions" on the interchangeability of the products. The complaint said the commission "ignored questionnaire data" and instead used "anecdotal evidence of interchangeability."
The ITC said frozen shrimp is "frequently marketed and sold in ways that downplay the distinctions between domestic wild-caught shrimp and imported farm-raised shrimp, which inhibits purchasing decisions on that basis and elevates distinctions in prices." The commission cited the domestic industry's hearing testimony, one website and one package of frozen shrimp to back its conclusion, the trade group said.
On the other side of the argument, the questionnaire data and Costco's testimony "clearly established that there is separate and distinct demand for farm-raised and wild-caught shrimp," the brief said.
The statute requires the ITC to find if the domestic industry is "materially injured or threatened with material injury by reason of" subject imports, though it doesn't define the phrase "by reason of," the trade group said. The commission's evaluation of the "by reason of" standard "must ensure that subject imports are more than a minimal or tangential cause of injury," the trade group argued.
In addition, the legislative history also says that the commission must look to other factors other than imports in assessing injury -- something the ITC didn't do, the complaint alleged.
The trade group additionally contested the ITC's finding of "significant price underselling." The commission said there was significant underselling because the imports led to a "shift in market share from the domestic industry to cumulated subject imports" from 2021 to 2023.
The trade group said this finding was "improper" for two reasons: the ITC considered changes in market share for fresh and frozen shrimp, even though domestic production of frozen shrimp was "more comparable to" imports of frozen shrimp; and the ITC "failed to consider market share over the full" investigation period. While the statute doesn't define a threshold for "significant" underselling, the "term must be given meaning," the brief said.
"The Commission’s finding that underselling was 'significant' when U.S. processors lost only 0.3 percentage points of market share is inconsistent with the plain language of the statute and renders the statutory term meaningless," the brief said.
The complaint additionally alleged that the commission failed to "adopt certain comments on draft questionnaires, proposed by respondents," and erred in concluding that the imports had a "significant adverse impact" on the domestic industry.