The US has broken WTO’s commitment, according to Vietnam’s view in the way it imposed antidumping duties on Vietnam’s fish fillet, which are being considered as “dumped, or sold at an unfairly cheap price on the US market” informed Reuters.
Following the procedure, the US will have 60 days to settle the complaint, otherwise Vietnam can request WTO to adjudicate.
This is the fourth complaints filed by Vietnam to the WTO since its participation in the organization in 2007. That said, the two previous complaints in related to seafood (DS404 and DS429) were aimed to counteract the US’s action of imposing antidumping duties on Vietnamese shrimps.
The US is the largest market for Vietnamese fish fillets, as such, the import value has increased from US$100 million in 2007 to over US$520 million in 2016. Vietnam thus, has become the third largest supplier of fish fillets to the US, behind Chile and China.
Over the recent two decades, the US has been involved in a series of trade disputes over its use of antidumping duties, however, it has lost many of them after its calculation methods were found to be out of line with the WTO rules.
Earlier this week, WTO has issued a complaint filed by Canada against the US use of antidumping and anti-subsidy tariffs. The US President Donald Trump criticized its neighboring country’s decision, calling it “an ill-advised attack”, which could potentially lead to a “wave of imported goods from China and other countries”.
In an unrelated move, South Korea has requested WTO to give permission on imposing trade sanction up to US$711 million against the US, referring to the case of the US imposing antidumping duties and anti-subsidy tariffs on its wash machine.
In December, trade value of fishery products was estimated at 714 million USD, taking the total value of Vietnam’s seafood export in 2017 at 8.32 billion USD, up 18% compared to the previous year’s figure. The US, Japan, China and Korea are the top 4 import markets of Vietnam’s seafood, accounting for 55.3% of export value for fishery products. Markets with the fastest growing rate in exporting seafood are China (64.4%), Netherlands (48.6%), England (36.4%), Korea (29.1%), Canada (22.3%) and Japan (20%).
Also in December, Vietnam’s import value of fishery products reached 152 million USD, totaling the import value of seafood in 2017 at 1.45 billion USD, an increase of 30.4% over the same period of 2016. The main products exported are shrimp with growth rate over 21% and trade value of 3.8 billion USD, and pangasius with 1.8 billion USD, up nearly 4% compared to 2016, according to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP).
