(seafood.vasep.com.vn) According to a report from Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) under the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA), in the first seven months of this year, the U.S imported 359,948 MT of shrimp, worth by US$3.3 billion, up 3% in volume but down 1% in value from a year ago.
Top 6 largest shrimp suppliers to the U.S included India (35% of total U.S shrimp imports), Indonesia (21%), Ecuador (12%), Vietnam (7.2%), Thailand (7%) and China (6.7%).
In the U.S, high inventory and a fall in the average import price affected shrimp imports into the U.S in July this year. After a 14-month increase, the U.S shrimp imports dropped in May, June and July this year. This trend was in contrast to the past years when these months were the time of U.S shrimp imports beginning to increase.
Vietnam is also one of the suppliers to reduce shrimp exports to the U.S in July this year. Recently, the U.S Department of Commerce (DOC) has announced the final results of anti-dumping duties on Vietnamese shrimp during the 12th administrative review period - POR12 (from 1st February 2016- 1st January 2017), the final tariff rate for Vietnamese shrimp exporters is 4.58%, which is lower than the preliminary tax of 25.39% announced by DOC on 8th March 2018. This result was also better than the final POR11 tariff.
In 2017, while Vietnam’s shrimp exports to markets increased sharply with export prices higher than in previous years, exports to the US market fell by 7% to touch US$659 million due to the influence of anti-dumping taxes. The U.S then lost its leading position to be the fourth largest buyer of Vietnamese shrimp. Export of shrimp to the US market in the first 8 months of 2018 decreased 5.5% to 393 million USD.
With the POR12 results lower than preliminary results and POR11 results, Vietnam’s shrimp exports to the U.S market in the coming months expected to recover to see about US$615 million for the full year, down slightly by 6.5% compared to 2017.