The United States Department of Commerce–the DOC–has made its final determination with respect to frozen warmwater shrimp from Ecuador, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. This includes a subsidy rate for Vietnam exporters of 2.84 percent, except in the case of Thong Thuan Company Limited, which received a rate of 221.82 percent ‘based on adverse inferences’.
The DOC’s preliminary determination for Vietnam, notes that ‘one or more respondents did not act to the best of their ability to respond to Commerce’s requests for information’. There being only two firms investigated from Vietnam, and given that the second Soc Trang Seafood Joint Stock Company, the other firm, received its own subsidy rate of 2.84 percent, it appears that the aforementioned statement explains Thong Thuan’s much higher subsidy rate.
Furthermore Vietnam is treated as a non-market economy in antidumping and countervailing duties investigations in the United States, where adequate information is not provided by companies investigated, they are often determined based on the input costs of a third country.