Yesterday, the U.S. Court of International Trade issued an opinion affirming the U.S. Department of Commerce’s remand redetermination in the thirteenth administrative review of the antidumping duty order on certain frozen warmwater shrimp from India finding that Calcutta Seafoods Private Limited, Bay Seafood Limited, and Elque & Company (collectively, “the Elque Group”) had been dumping frozen warmwater shrimp into the United States between February 1, 2017 and January 31, 2018 at 27.66 percent below normal value.
The Court’s decision follows the Elque Group’s successful challenge of Commerce’s initial decision to not analyze the company’s sales to the United States and, instead, assign the exporter a 110.90 percent antidumping duty based on the company’s failure to provide the agency with sufficient information. In an opinion issued earlier this year, the Court held that it was improper for Commerce to disregard the information provided by the Elque Group.
The Southern Shrimp Alliance has long requested that Commerce investigate the sales activities of many more of the hundreds of Indian companies that export shrimp to the United States each year. Over the last decade, as India has become the largest supplier of frozen warmwater shrimp to the United States, Commerce has only subjected two Indian companies to individual examination in the annual administrative reviews of the antidumping duty order.
Rejecting the U.S. industry’s arguments, the agency has repeatedly looked into the sales activities of the same companies while declining to investigate whether increased export volumes from other suppliers resulted from increased dumping. Although the 110.90 percent antidumping duty rate initially assigned to the Elque Group was much higher than the 27.66 percent antidumping duty rate eventually determined for the company, the former rate was not based on an examination of the Elque Group’s sales behavior in the United States and Commerce has held that this rate is not informative of Indian exporters’ participation in the U.S. market generally. Now, with a 27.66 percent rate calculated based on the specific sales experience of the Elque Group, there is additional reason to believe that Commerce’s approach has failed to address the level of dumping occurring with Indian shrimp sales into the United States.
The domestic shrimp industry has argued that investigations of other Indian exporters would lead to a better understanding of the extent of unfair trade occurring in the U.S. market. Commerce began investigating Indian entities that had not been subject to prior individual review in the thirteenth administrative review. In the fourteenth administrative review, Commerce found that the Indian shrimp exporter ZA Sea Foods Private Limited had been dumping frozen warmwater shrimp into the U.S. market at a 3.06 percent dumping margin between February 1, 2018 and January 31, 2019. At the time this decision was announced last year, the 3.06 percent rate was the highest dumping margin calculated for an Indian shrimp exporter since September 2015, when the Commerce Department calculated a 3.28 dumping margin for Devi Fisheries in the Final Results of the ninth administrative review.
Earlier this year, Commerce published Preliminary Results in the fifteenth administrative review of the antidumping duty order on certain frozen warmwater shrimp from India, covering shrimp sales made into the United States between February 1, 2019 and January 31, 2020. If those Preliminary Results are maintained in Final Results due to be issued by the agency later this year, the two Indian companies that were individually examined, HN Indigos (11.36 percent) and RSA Marines (4.73 percent) will be found to have engaged in dumping at the highest rates seen, with the exception of the Elque Group, since the first administrative review of the antidumping duty order on certain frozen warmwater shrimp from India.
The Elque Group’s 27.66 percent dumping margin affirmed by the Court of International Trade yesterday is the highest level of dumping calculated for any Indian shrimp exporter in the history of the antidumping duty order. The Indian companies that were covered by the thirteenth administrative review proceeding conducted by Commerce but not individually examined were found, in the same remand redetermination, to be dumping at a 6.13 percent margin. This dumping rate, also affirmed by the federal court yesterday, is, on its own, higher than any dumping margin calculated for an Indian exporter since the first administrative review.
Review the U.S. Court of International Trade’s opinion in Calcutta Seafood Pvt. Ltd. v. United States here: https://shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Calcutta-Seafoods-Opinion.pdf