[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Shrimp and Mischief

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Shrimp and Mischief

July 21, 2004
 


 

These have been surprisingly busy days on the trade front.
The United States is pushing forward on free trade
agreements with Africa, Australia and Central America,
while negotiating with Europe and others in an attempt to
revive a stalled effort to lower the barriers that make it
hard for farmers in the developing world to sell their
products. Along with all this progress, however, there have
been some distressing reminders of how easy it is for
protectionist interests at home to undermine the nation's
commitment to free trade, at a high cost to consumers and
the overall economy. The spurious antidumping case brought
against imported Vietnamese and Chinese shrimp is one
particularly unfortunate example. 

The Bush administration decided earlier this month that
shrimp farmers in those two countries were unfairly dumping
their shrimp in the American market. As a result, they will
face tariffs ranging up to 113 percent. The charges are
unfair, but because Vietnam and China are not market
economies, the Commerce Department has much license to
estimate their shrimp exporters' costs and claim that their
prices are improperly set below that level. 

These antidumping cases are notoriously easy for American
businesses to win, and the Bush administration has been
especially solicitous of aggrieved industries, particularly
those thought to have political clout. Even more
scandalous, American industries can profit from bringing
antidumping cases, thanks to a law that allows complaining
companies to pocket some of the tariffs collected if they
win. The World Trade Organization has ruled that this
practice is illegal, but it continues anyway. 

In Vietnam, this shrimp protectionism is seen as only the
latest example of American hypocrisy. Washington implored
Hanoi to open up its economy and sign a trade deal that
would help bring its farmers into the world of global
commerce. But given what's happened since then, Vietnam now
assumes that America doesn't really want it to succeed.
Last year, Washington slapped unwarranted tariffs on
another Vietnamese export, catfish. 

The Chinese got word of the shrimp move just as Washington
persuaded Beijing to drop a tax rebate for its domestic
semiconductor companies that unfairly hurt American
competitors. Now the shrimp case will invite retaliatory
mischief; such cases always do. Things may still get worse,
as Washington has yet to decide antidumping cases against a
group of other nations that include Brazil and Thailand. 

Sophisticated overseas shrimp farms can bring shrimp to
market far more cheaply than American fishing trawlers can.
Imported shrimp now accounts for nearly 90 percent of the
domestic market, and the resulting lower prices have made
shrimp, once a luxury item, the nation's most popular
seafood. This all flows naturally from the laws of
economics that this country is supposed to believe in. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/21/opinion/21wed1.html?ex=1091431091&ei=1&en=074500f78e51df26


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