U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced yesterday that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will require a reduction of 7.2% in the amount of funds made available for distribution under the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act (CDSOA). The 7.2% reduction results from the resolution of the federal budget impasse between Congress and the Administration. Under sequestration, the accounts maintained by CBP for the CDSOA program had been specifically identified by OMB as budgetary accounts subject to reduction in a report to Congress regarding fiscal year 2014 submitted in May 2013. For the fiscal year 2015, OMB’s March 2014 report to Congress calls for a sequester of 7.3% of CDSOA funds to be distributed next year.
CBP has indicated that it is seeking clarification from OMB “as to whether this sequester is considered temporary or permanent.” If OMB determines that this sequester is permanent, the withheld funds will not be distributed. If OMB determines that this sequester is temporary, CBP will make a supplemental distribution of these funds at some future point.
CBP’s announcement regarding the impact of sequestration on CDSOA distributions this year included a table providing the amounts that will be sequestered by case for fiscal year 2014. This reporting indicates that a total of $466,316.25 was to be made available for distribution to eligible recipients in the shrimp industry for antidumping duties collected on the six antidumping duty orders on imported shrimp. Of this amount, $33,574.77 will be sequestered, with a remainder of $432,741.48 to be distributed to the shrimp industry as summarized in the table below:
| Order (Case Number) | Sequestered Amount | Total Amount (Sequestered Amount ÷ 0.072) | Total CDSOA Funds for Distribution |
| Shrimp from Ecuador (A-331-802) | $58.92 | $818.47 | $759.54 |
| Shrimp from Brazil (A-351-838) | $12.14 | $168.61 | $156.47 |
| Shrimp from India (A-533-840) | $1,630.86 | $22,650.83 | $21,019.97 |
| Shrimp from Thailand (A-549-822) | $360.59 | $5,008.19 | $4,647.60 |
| Shrimp from Vietnam (A-552-802) | $140.12 | $1,946.11 | $1,805.99 |
| Shrimp from China (A-570-893) | $31,372.13 | $435,724.03 | $404,351.90 |
| Total | $33,574.77 | $466,316.25 | $432,741.48 |
For the CDSOA program as a whole, sequestration will require CBP to withhold $6.5 million in funds from distribution this fiscal year. Absent sequestration, roughly $90 million would have been distributed through the program. Of this amount, four antidumping duty orders – corrosion-resistant carbon steel flat rolled products from Korea ($30.4 million); crawfish tails from China ($21.4 million); honey from China ($7.9 million); and wooden bedroom furniture from China ($6.1 million) – account for fully three-quarters of the total.
Based on the new numbers released by CBP, since FY2006, over $266 million in collected antidumping duties have been made available for distribution to the shrimp industry through CDSOA. The amount available for distribution this year to shrimp industry claimants is the lowest in the history of the program – an indication that, for the shrimp industry, distributions under the CDSOA program are coming to a close.
Antidumping duties collected on imports of shrimp entered into the country before October 1, 2007 are distributed through the CDSOA program. Funds will continue to be distributed, in diminishing amounts, under the CDSOA program until all litigation regarding those shrimp import entries is resolved and final duties are assessed and collected by CBP.
The total amount of duties collected on shrimp imports and distributed through CDSOA is summarized in the chart below:
For other seafood industries, different trends have applied.
For example, the domestic crawfish industry has received CDSOA distributions since 2002. The amount available (including sequestered amounts) for distribution this fiscal year – $21.4 million – is the single largest distribution ever made to the industry. The amount reported available for this fiscal year is equal to one-third of the total $64.6 million distributed to the crawfish industry over the prior thirteen years.
In contrast, CBP’s reporting indicates that no CDSOA funds will be made available this year for the domestic catfish industry. The catfish industry has not received significant CDSOA distributions from the antidumping duty order on frozen fish fillets from Vietnam since 2010, but has received nearly $29 million under the CDSOA program since fiscal year 2005.
Over the 14 year life of the CDSOA program, CBP has reported having nearly $3.3 billion available for distributions to eligible recipients meaning that the shrimp industry has received 8.2% of the total benefits delivered under the program to date.
Review the Southern Shrimp Alliance’s charts summarizing total CDSOA distributions, as well as distributions to the shrimp, crawfish, and catfish industries here: https://shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Comparisons-on-Distributions-through-FY2014.pdf
Read CBP’s announcement regarding sequestration and CDSOA distributions in FY2014 here: http://www.cbp.gov/trade/priority-issues/adcvd/continued-dumping-and-subsidy-offset-act-cdsoa
See the amounts sequestered on a case-by-case basis here: http://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/FY14%20Sequestered%20Amounts_by%20case1.pdf
Review OMB’s April 2013 (corrected in May 2013) report to the President and Congress regarding sequestration in fiscal year 2014 (the CDSOA account number is 015-12-5688) here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/legislative_reports/fy14_preview_and_joint_committee_reductions_reports_05202013.pdf
Review OMB’s March 2014 report to Congress regarding sequestration in fiscal year 2015 (the CDSOA account number is 015-12-5688) here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/legislative_reports/sequestration_order_report_march2014.pdf