WTO Rejects Vietnamese Frozen Warmwater Shrimp Appeal
World Trade Organization judges shot down a Vietnamese appeal on its successful challenge to U.S. antidumping duties on frozen warmwater shrimp on on April 7. The appellate body upheld the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) panel’s decision in the case, and the WTO will now discontinue legal analysis in the case, said the WTO in its findings (here).
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Vietnam scored a victory when the WTO faulted the U.S. in the original ruling in November 2014, but the U.S. claimed a partial win, as well (see 1411190030). The WTO sided with Vietnam in its challenge to the Commerce Department’s “zeroing” methods in antidumping duty administrative reviews, but Vietnam still appealed two months later (see 1501070005). Commerce banned “zeroing” in 2012, but the WTO ruled the agency conducted three administrative reviews that do fall under the WTO terms of reference in the case.
In the April 7 appellate ruling, the judges rejected a Vietnamese challenge to the application of the ruling on “prior unliquidated entries.” The Uruguay Round Agreements Act, signed into law in the U.S. in 1994, lays out specific circumstances when AD and countervailing duty determinations apply to those entries in that bill's Section 129 (c) (1) (here). The Commerce Department issued the preliminary results of its most recent antidumping duty administrative review on Vietnamese frozen warmwater shrimp in early March (see 1503060027).