CBP Finds Company's Shrimp Entries to be Subject to AD Duties Following Commerce Clarification

CBP, after consulting with the Commerce Department, ruled against a protest filed by a Rubicon Group company that said the agency mistakenly applied the "all-others" antidumping duty rate for five 2012 shrimp entries. The Aug. 5 further review of protest (here), submitted by Sea Wealth Frozen Food, said CBP was in error when it liquidated the entries, because Commerce instructed CBP to apply the all others rate to resellers or intermediaries, while Sea Wealth is an exporter within the Rubicon Group that was assigned Rubicon's AD rate. The entries at issue in the protest, which was filed with the Port of Los Angeles, were subject to duties on frozen warmwater shrimp from Thailand.

The frozen shrimp, entered in 2008 and 2009, were produced, exported, and imported by Sea Wealth, and were subject to antidumping duty order number A-549-822, said CBP. After Commerce published the final results of its AD duty administrative review for shrimp from Thailand, the agency issued importer-specific liquidation instructions for certain exporters, including Rubicon, as well as exporter-specific liquidation instructions covering shrimp produced by the Rubicon Group. Sea Wealth was included in neither. Instead, the fifth paragraph of the instructions directed that, "for companies that did not receive an importer specific rate or an exporter specific rate ... to apply the all-others rate to their shipments." That same paragraph included a Commerce clarification to its regulation on the agency's "reseller policy."

Sea Wealth contended that its entries were improperly liquidated because they are not covered by the liquidation instructions in that paragraph. The company said the paragraph only applies to resellers or intermediaries under Commerce's reseller policy, but Sea Wealth is not a reseller. In response to the protest filing, CBP sought input from the Commerce Department, which said the liquidation instructions apply "to shrimp entered by Sea Wealth, where Sea Wealth was the exporter, producer, and importer." As a result, "in carrying out our ministerial role in assessing antidumping duties, CBP must follow Commerce’s instructions and clarification and liquidate Sea Wealth’s entries at the all-others rate pursuant to Paragraph 5," said the agency.