ITC Didn't Consider Supply Constraints of US Shrimp Producers, Export Group Argues
The International Trade Commission improperly found that the U.S. industry was injured by shrimp imports and not by "conditions of competition unrelated to imports," a trade group for Indian shrimp exporters told the Court of International Trade in a Feb. 24 complaint. The trade group, the Seafood Exporters Association of India, also alleged that cooked frozen shrimp products "must be considered a separate like product distinct from uncooked frozen shrimp products" (Seafood Exporters Association of India v. United States, CIT # 25-00031).
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The complaint was filed to challenge the ITC's finding that imports of frozen warmwater shrimp from Ecuador, India, Indonesia and Vietnam injured the U.S. industry. During the proceeding, the association told the commission about "various adverse non-import conditions of competition impacting the domestic industry," including the fact that the supply of raw shrimp in the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic is "finite" and the domestic industry's reliance on this "finite supply makes it 'incapable of capturing' greater market share."
The association supplied "economic analysis" showing the "domestic industry's shrimp supply is fixed, and that subject import quantities have no statistically significant relationship to U.S. supply as measured by domestic shrimp landings (i.e., the amount of shrimp U.S. fishermen catch)." The ITC rejected these arguments, finding the supply constraints "irrelevant." The commission said there's no information on the record "that this undefined limit constrained" domestically produced shrimp and barred the domestic industry from increasing production.
The export group also told the ITC that imports of cooked shrimp are a "separate like product requiring a separate injury analysis." Due to the evidence showing the "lack of interchangeability between cooked and uncooked products and the domestic industry’s extremely limited capability to produce cooked products," the trade group said cooked shrimp doesn't harm or threaten to harm the domestic industry.
The ITC said in its final injury finding that uncooked and cooked shrimp products "share basic physical characteristics and the same end use, for meal preparation” and "some overlap in terms of manufacturing facilities and production processes, channels of distribution, and producer and customer perceptions." Thus, the commission declined to find two like products.
The trade group filed a two-count complaint at CIT, challenging the commission's alleged failure to consider the domestic industry's supply constraints and refusal to find two like products.