On Friday, the U.S. Department of Commerce (Commerce) completed an administrative proceeding investigating the market status of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, a country that continues to be governed under the one-party rule of the Communist Party of Vietnam and continues to enforce laws that prohibit the private ownership of land. At the end of that proceeding, Commerce concluded that Vietnam continues to be a non-market economy (NME) for the purposes of the antidumping duty laws.
The Southern Shrimp Alliance, joined by a large, diverse group of U.S. industries, objected to Commerce’s decision in 2023 to conduct a formal administrative proceeding, arguing that the federal government was wasting time and limited resources in order to curry favor with another non-democratic government aspiring to be a client state of the Chinese Communist Party. After the proceeding was formally initiated over these objections, the Southern Shrimp Alliance made multiple submissions opposing Vietnam’s request to be treated as a market economy.
Nevertheless, the Commerce process dragged on, with the Communist Party of Vietnam intensively lobbying the American government to recognize Vietnam as a market economy country.
In response to this pressure, on July 24th, seven U.S. Senators, including Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), Senator Roger F. Wicker (R-MS), Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), and Senator Katie Boyd Britt (R-AL), wrote Commerce to express their deep concerns regarding the damage that would be done to American industries by taking steps to appease the Communist Party of Vietnam. The Senators also persuasively argued that any change in treatment of Vietnam was unwarranted as the country had not taken sufficient steps to move away from communist control. In particular, the Senators observed that the Politburo of the Vietnamese Communist Party issued “Directive 24” in 2023 asserting greater totalitarian control over the country in order to combat and neutralize “hostile” foreign forces. The Senators noted, “[t]hese are not the actions of a nation that is opening up its economic or political system.”
“The U.S. commercial shrimp fishery is collapsing, and while one part of Commerce tells fishermen that they won’t consider whether imports have caused a fishery disaster, another part of that agency spent almost a year on the Vietnamese Communist Party’s claim that they operate a market economy,” said John Williams, the Executive Director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance. “While we cannot make sense of why this was ever an issue, we are nevertheless grateful that Commerce came to the right conclusion and thank Senators Cassidy, Wicker, Hyde-Smith, and Britt for consistently defending the interests of the commercial fishermen in their respective states and throughout the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic.”
Read the letter from Senators Tom Cotton, Roger F. Wicker, Bill Cassidy, M.D., Cindy Hyde-Smith, Josh Hawley, Katie Boyd Britt, and John Boozman to the U.S. Department of Commerce (July 24, 2024) here: https://shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/vietnam_raimondo_letter1.pdf
Read Commerce’s 284-page explanation of the agency’s finding that Vietnam continues to be a non-market economy (Aug. 2, 2024), with summaries of the Southern Shrimp Alliance’s submissions at pages 217-218 and 243 here: https://shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Vietnam-NME-IDM.pdf
Read the Southern Shrimp Alliance’s December 21st Letter to Commerce opposing the government of Vietnam’s request to be treated as a market economy here: https://shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Southern-Shrimp-Alliance-Comments-in-Opposition-to-NME-CCR.pdf
Read the Southern Shrimp Alliance’s February 1st Letter to Commerce rebutting the arguments of parties supporting the government of Vietnam’s request to be treated as a market economy here: https://shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Southern-Shrimp-Alliance-Rebuttal-Comments-on-NME-CCR.pdf