US-anti-dumping measures on certain shrimp from Viet Nam: A Stir-fry of seafood, statistics, and lacunae

Abstract

This unappealed Panel Report deals with now standard controversies involving US zeroing practices, but also involves a number of novel problems in administrative reviews of US anti-dumping orders that transcend zeroing issues. Most importantly, this dispute highlights the economic, legal, and statistical importance of sample-selection bias when calculating 'all others' rates for exporters that were not queried during dumping investigations. Sampling is particularly problematic in this dispute since US investigators found only zero and de minimis margins in the administrative reviews, a situation in which the relevant provision of the Anti-Dumping Agreement appears to provide no guidance (an apparent 'lacuna'). The Panel did not directly deal with the key sample-selection issues in the case, and so we provide an alternative legal and statistical analysis. These issues are likely to become more important as the practice of zeroing is phased out in the United States. Indeed, sampling may well be the new zeroing. © Michael Hahn and Kirtikumar Mehta.