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Vietnam wins anti-dumping lawsuit against US
The World Trade Organization on Monday announced that the US violates global trade rules in the calculation of its anti-dumping tariffs imposed on Vietnam’s frozen shrimps.
The decision came after a series of actions taken by the WTO after the US accused Vietnam of selling its frozen shrimps at prices which are lowers than prices on the Vietnamese market.
In its decision, the WTO said the US "has acted inconsistently with provisions of the Anti-Dumping Agreement and the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade” and promised to solve the dispute in accordance with these agreements.
The WTO said the US’s so-called ‘zeroing’, a framework for calculating dumping margins, was against WTO agreements.
Vietnam has argued that the zeroing method creates a large dumping margin for its products, hiking tariffs and damaging Vietnamese shrimp exporters.
The US imposes the anti-dumping tariffs of between 4.13 and 25.76 percent on most Vietnamese shrimp exporters.
The US began its anti-dumping lawsuits against shrimp exporters from Vietnam and 11 other countries in 2003, after a similar lawsuit against Vietnamese catfish.
Saying Vietnam is yet to be a market economy, the US rejects the production and domestic prices proposed by Vietnamese exporters. Instead, it uses the reference prices of a similar market as Vietnam’s.
Last February, Vietnam filed a lawsuit against the American anti-dumping tariffs on its frozen shrimps.
The case has won interest and attention from China, India, Japan, Mexico and the European Union. In February this year, China also launched a similar suit.
The WTO rules allow members to impose duties on imports if their domestic manufacturers complain that their businesses are threatened by the imports.
Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, the EU, Japan, Mexico, South Korea and Thailand have all won zeroing cases at the WTO.
In January, the US promised to change the method with these partners.
But in March, the US International Trade Commission decided to continue import duties for five more years on shrimps from Thailand, its major supplier, as well as from China, India, Brazil and Vietnam.
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