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Issue link: https://seafoodbusiness.epubxp.com/i/112398
Top Story There and back again Shrimp importers have faced numerous trade barriers over the past decade. Te most signi���cant were duty rates, ranging from 4 percent to more than 100 percent, on imports from six Asian and Latin American nations. U.S. shrimp imports had just soared to unprecedented highs, rising from 848 million pounds in 2001 to 1.2 billion pounds only two years later. Te Southern Shrimp Alliance (SSA), representing shrimp companies from the Gulf of Mexico and southeast Atlantic coast, ���led an antidumping petition with the federal government in 2003, claiming the imports were being sold at a price below the cost of production. Tey won. John Williams, SSA executive director, says it was the right move at the time. ���Te amount of imports coming in was increasing exponentially, and our prices were dropping sharply,��� he says. ���When the case was ���led, both leveled o���.��� Te now-defunct Byrd Amendment allowed for the collected tari��� monies to be distributed to the petitioners. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) documents, $258,714,567 was awarded to shrimp ���shermen and processors from 2005 to 2007, when Byrd (o���cially known as the Continued Dumping and Subsidy O���set Act of 2000) was dissolved after being repealed by Congress in late 2005. National Fisheries Institute President John Connelly and many others wonder what exactly was done with those funds. ���Tat���s a lot of money that could have gone to improvements on boats, in manufacturing plants and marketing programs,��� says Connelly. ���And while everyone���s improving a bit, I think the general agreement is we didn���t see a quarter-billon [dollars] of improvements in capital infrastructure.��� Other critics aren���t as restrained. In a Jan. 18 op-ed column for the Raleigh News & Observer, Travis Larkin, president of Te Seafood Exchange in Raleigh, N.C., argued that the domestic shrimp industry has done itself a disservice by failing to recognize the global nature of the seafood industry. ���Have we really gone from a country where entrepreneurs with a dream and willingness to sacri���ce must now compete, not against other seafood companies, but well-dressed lawyers bent on suppressing trade rather than encouraging it?��� he wrote. ���Such tactics mock those who are willing to work hard because they have faith that only in America can you make it on the virtue of competition, not regulation.��� ���I just see these guys looking for handouts,��� adds Eric Bloom, president of Eastern Fish Co. in Teaneck, N.J. ���I���m very disappointed in a U.S. industry that���s ceased to try to improve its own business. Tey won���t innovate anymore and they blame other people for not being able to compete.��� Bloom isn���t completely devoid of sympathy. While his company is one of the country���s leading importers of farmed shrimp from Central and South America as well as Asia, bringing in more than 60 million pounds annually, it���s also worked with domestic shrimp ��� or at least tried to. A few years ago Eastern attempted a wild American shrimp program for its retail customers but couldn���t