WTO names panel for US shrimp hearing
GENEVA — World Trade Organisation (WTO) director general Pascal Lamy has named a three-member panel to adjudicate US accusations that Viet Nam has dumped frozen shrimp on the US export market. The panelists are Mohammad Saeed, counsellor from Pakistan's permanent mission to the WTO; Deborah Milstein, from Israel's Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labour; and Iain Sandford, director of the international trade group of the Australian law firm Minter Ellison Lawyers.
The panel will examine the evidence and report its final decision to the parties within six months.
Vietnamese shrimp exporters currently face US dumping duties of 0-26 per cent. However, in February of this year, Viet Nam requested consultations on the US practice known as "zeroing" in determining negative dumping margins, the effect of which is to artificially create dumping margins. Viet Nam considers that through its use of "zeroing", the US has failed to make a fair comparison between the export price and the normal value, and calculated distorted margins of dumping.
Viet Nam joined the WTO in January 2007, and this is its first trade dispute with a WTO member state. The dispute has not only symbolic significance but also defends shrimp exports that were worth some US$1.5 billion in exports last year, according to the Viet Nam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP).
In the first six months this year, Viet Nam exported 87,200 tonnes of shrimp in 2010, up 19.2 per cent in volume and 19.6 per cent in value over the previous year. Major markets, besides the US, include China, Japan, South Korea and the EU. — VNS