Eight Senators Ask Commerce Secretary to Reverse AD Preliminary Rate Review Decision

The senators from Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana asked the commerce secretary to reverse a preliminary decision to reduce the "Vietnam-wide" antidumping rate for Vietnamese catfish exporters that haven't been assigned their own rate to 14 cents per kilogram, from a previous $2.39/kg rate.

The change, which has not yet affected the cash deposits that importers pay, was announced Sept. 7. The review of the Vietnam-wide rate that could lead to a lower rate for more than 100 exporting companies was requested by domestic producers. One Vietnamese company under review was found not to be dumping catfish at all (see 2309110057)

The eight Republican senators said it "defies logic" that companies that didn't participate in Commerce's investigation, and have failed to establish independence from Vietnam's Communist ruling government, should receive the same rate as companies that did provide information to AD investigators.

They said if the preliminary decision is made final, it would abandon the longstanding precedent in the more-than-20-year trade remedy against Vietnamese imported catfish.

They said it would "also set a troubling precedent for the approximately 250 [nonmarket economy] proceedings involving communist governments before the Commerce Department."

They said that by not penalizing state-controlled firms that are non-cooperative with a higher rate, it allows the governments in those nonmarket economies "to more aggressively game the system by forcing entities with low rates to participate, preventing those with high rates from participating, and thereby enabling the average of the low rates to be assigned to all non-participating/[government] controlled companies."