Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Commerce (Commerce) announced the final results of the expedited review of the countervailing duty order on frozen warmwater shrimp from Ecuador. The decision rejects a more than year-long effort of three Ecuadorian exporters to be excluded from the countervailing duty order on Ecuadorian shrimp.
What Is an Expedited Review?
An “expedited review” is an administrative process Commerce created that isn’t provided for by statute. It allows exporting companies that were not specifically and individually investigated in the initial investigation to seek permanent exclusion from trade relief, provided they can show that they did not receive countervailable subsidies during the period of investigation.
In practice, this means that after having spent nearly one year conducting an investigation of the countervailable subsidies granted to an industry, Commerce will re-do that investigation for any company that requests an “expedited review.”
In this case, three Ecuadorian shrimp exporters – Empacadora del Pacifico S.A. (Edpacif), Nirsa S.A. /Procesadora Posorja S.A. (Nirsa/Proposorja), and Productos Perecibles y Mariscos S.A. (Propemar) – requested an expedited review in February 2025. As a result, Commerce spent the last eighteen months investigating whether the three companies received countervailable subsidies from the government of Ecuador during the 2022 calendar year.
Historically, foreign exporters have used the “expedited review” administrative process as a low-risk opportunity to carve out holes in a countervailing duty order. After a lengthy and expensive initial investigation, these “expedited reviews” require domestic industries to commit additional resources to another year of administrative litigation in order to maintain the integrity of trade relief. If a domestic industry cannot devote resources to further litigation, an “expedited review” becomes a check-the-box exercise in which foreign exporter claims receive little further investigation.
Why Didn’t the Expedited Review Work for Foreign Exporters this Time?
In response to the three exporters’ request, the Southern Shrimp Alliance, through the Ad Hoc Shrimp Trade Action Committee (AHSTAC), and the American Shrimp Processors Association (ASPA) committed significant resources to defending the countervailing duty order.
Over the last quarter century, the Ecuadorian shrimp industry has been investigated by Commerce for unfair trade practices three times: for dumping in 2004, for countervailable subsidies in 2013, and, again, for countervailable subsidies in 2024. Each time, Commerce found the Ecuadorian shrimp exporters were engaging in unfair trade.
Yet those findings didn’t always lead to lasting relief. The February 2005 antidumping duty order was revoked in August 2007 over the objection of American shrimpers. And in 2013, the U.S. International Trade Commission—over the dissent of two commissioners–found that the domestic shrimp processing industry had not suffered material injury from the unfairly-traded imports, so no countervailing duty order was issued.
Faced with the prospect of Ecuadorian shrimp once again evading consequences for unfair trading practices, ASPA and the Southern Shrimp Alliance fully participated in the “expedited review” before Commerce and challenged Edpacif’s, Nirsa/Proposorja’s, and Propemar’s claims to have not benefitted from countervailable subsidies.
The strategy worked, as seen by the final results:
- Nirsa/Proposorja: 2.21%
- Propemar: 2.25%
- Edpacif: 15.17%
Edpacif’s rate stands out. It’s more than three times larger than the highest rate calculated from the original investigation: 4.41% for Sociedad Nacional de Galapagos C.A. (SONGA). It’s also higher than the highest rate Commerce calculated for any Ecuadorian shrimp exporter during Commerce’s 2013 investigation: 13.51% for Promarisco C.A.
In other words, by forcing the federal agency to conduct an “expedited review,” the Ecuadorian shrimp industry established that some exporters are being subsidized by the Ecuadorian government at much higher levels than what Commerce had found in the original investigation.
The practical impact is immediate. Once the final results are published in the Federal Register, importers of shrimp from Edpacif will be required to make cash deposits at an ad valorem rate of 15.17%, rather than the 3.78% rate they had been paying since the publication of the countervailing duty order at the end of 2024.
“Unfair trade practices have given foreign shrimp exporters near limitless resources to put American fishermen out of work. Whether it’s Ecuadorian companies forcing the domestic industry to litigate and re-litigate entitlement to trade relief or foreign conglomerates like Thai Union pretending to represent U.S. businesses in highly-publicized lobbying efforts on behalf of imported shrimp, millions of dollars are being spent on lawyers and lobbyists to wipe out our commercial fishery,” said Blake Price, Executive Director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance. “Shrimpers can’t match those resources dollar-for-dollar, but, as Commerce has once again proved, money doesn’t change the truth.”
Review the pre-publication version of Commerce’s Federal Register notice announcing the final results of the “expedited review” of the countervailing duty order on certain frozen warmwater shrimp from Ecuador here: https://shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/CVD-Ecuador-Shrimp-Expedited-Review-Unpublished-FR-Notice.pdf
Review Commerce’s “Issues and Decision Memorandum” accompanying the agency’s final results here: https://shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/CVD-Ecuador-Shrimp-Expedited-Review-IDM.pdf