US – Anti-Dumping Measures on Certain Shrimp from Viet Nam: A Stir-Fry of Seafood, Statistics, and Lacunae

Abstract

This unappealed Panel Report deals with now standard controversies involving US zeroing practices, but also involves a number of novel problems in administrative reviews of US anti-dumping orders that transcend zeroing issues. Most importantly, this dispute highlights the economic, legal, and statistical importance of sample-selection bias when calculating ‘all others’ rates for exporters that were not queried during dumping investigations. Sampling is particularly problematic in this dispute since US investigators found only zero and de minimis margins in the administrative reviews, a situation in which the relevant provision of the Anti-Dumping Agreement appears to provide no guidance (an apparent ‘lacuna’). The Panel did not directly deal with the key sample-selection issues in the case, and so we provide an alternative legal and statistical analysis. These issues are likely to become more important as the practice of zeroing is phased out in the United States. Indeed, sampling may well be the new zeroing.

US–Shrimp II (Vietnam): Dubious Application of Anti-Dumping Duties – Should Have Used Safeguards

“…This in turn gave rise to a prior dispute, United States -Anti-Dumping Measures on Certain Shrimp from Viet Nam (USShrimp (Vietnam) and (unappealed) Panel Report WT/DS404/R. That dispute demonstrated: "that the wholesale use of 'limited examination' under Article 6.10 ADA and the application of 'all others' rates to a large number of exporting firms constituted a distortive practice, leaving much to the potentially unprincipled discretion of the [USDOC], and [left] many exporting firms with irrelevantly high dumping margins, and no recourse to administrative review …" (Broude and Moore 2013). Given the USDOC's narrow response, eliminating only the specific practices mentioned in the case, this prompted the subsequent dispute of USShrimp II (Vietnam).…”

“…For over a decade now, the United States Department of Commerce (USDOC) has been causing controversy with its approach to anti-dumping (AD) proceedings. This controversy has focused largely on the use of so-called ‘zeroing’ (Bown and Sykes, 2008, Hoekman and Wauters, 2011, Prusa and Vermulst, 2011, Broude and Moore, 2013, Prusa and Roubini, 2013, Saggi and Wu, 2013, Ahn and Messerlin, 2014, and Hartigan, 2016). According to this practice, transactions with negative dumping margins are ignored in the determination of whether dumping has occurred and in the calculation of average dumping margins.…”

It's Baaaack: Zeroing, the US Department of Commerce, andUS‒Shrimp II (Viet Nam)

“…This matter arose in US‒Shrimp I (Viet Nam) , and has been detailed and addressed compellingly by Broude and Moore (2013) with regard to sampling. However, given my introduction of market structure to the discussion, I have a few additional points to include.…”

“…As there have been several analyses of panel and Appellate Body (AB) reports of simple and model zeroing 1 in antidumping (AD) investigations (Bown and Sykes, 2008; Hoekman and Wauters, 2011; Prusa and Vermulst, 2011; Broude and Moore, 2013; Prusa and Roubini, 2013; Saggi and Wu, 2013; and Ahn and Messerlin, 2014), 2 it would be tempting to dismiss another panel report on this topic as having nothing novel of legal and economic interest 3 . However, there are three novel legal issues in US‒Shrimp II (Viet Nam) , 4 for which a request for consultations was filed on 16 February 2012.…”

It's Baaaack Zeroing, the US Department of Commerce, and US Shrimp II (Viet Nam)

“…As there have been several analyses of Panel and Appellate Body (AB) reports of simple and model zeroing 1 in antidumping (AD) investigations (Bown and Sykes 2008, Hoekman and Wauters 2011, Prusa and Vermulst 2011, Broude and Moore 2013, Prusa and Roubini 2013, Saggi and Wu 2013, and Ahn and Messerlin 2014, 2 it would be tempting to dismiss another panel report on this topic as having nothing novel of legal and economic interest 3 . However, there are three novel legal issues in DS429 US-Certain Frozen Warmwater Shrimp (Viet Nam), for which a request for consultations was filed on February 16, 2012.…”