US lowers Tra fish anti-dumping duties The US Department of Commerce has announced its final decision on the ninth results of its administrative review (POR9) for anti-dumping duties on Tra fish fillets imported from Vietnam. The Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) reported under the March 31 decision, Vietnamese frozen Tra fish filets exported to the US are subjected to anti-dumping taxes. Accordingly, the anti-dumping duties on products of two mandatory reviewed companies, Vinh Hoan and Hung Vuong, are US$0.03 per kilo and US$1.2 per liko, respectively, and for other companies, US$0.42 per kilo. Truong Dinh Hoe, VASEP General Secretary, said the new anti-dumping tariffs were much lower than levels announced in the preliminary POR9 issued last September, when the tax imposed on products from Hung Vuong Corporation and Vinh Hoan Corporation was US$2.15 and US$0.42 a kilo, respectively, while other exporters had taxes of US$0.99 a kilo. Hoe said that after receiving the preliminary decision of POR9, the association and enterprises had worked to protect them against troublesome tariffs. This brought encouraging results. However, the new tariffs remained high, Hoe said, adding that Vietnam had sufficient reasons to show that businesses had not dumped Tra fish on the US market. In addition, choosing Indonesia instead of Bangladesh as previously as the sole benchmark country in calculating the anti-dumping rate of the DOC was unreasonable, Hoe said. Indonesia is not “economically comparable” to Vietnam and does not share similarities with Vietnam in breeding standards and input costs, thus, choosing it as the sole benchmark country in calculating the anti-dumping rate led to high anti-dumping tax rates, he said. He suggested the DOC reconsider its investigation involved in imposing anti-dumping duties on Vietnamese Tra fish exported to the US. With the new anti-dumping tax rates, exports of Vietnamese Tra fish to the US will be affected but not much, he said. Tra fish export revenue was worth US$275 million in the first two months of the year, a year-on-year increase of 8.5%, with the US and EU being two key importers, said To Thi Tuong Lan, VASEP Deputy General Secretary. The country is expected to earn around US$1.8 billion from Tra fish exports this year, similar to last year’s figure, she said. VNS