China and Viet Nam are being accused of dumping shrimp in the US and the US is about to impose some awful large tariffs on these countries’ exports of shrimp. I guess I can kiss cheap shrimp goodbye.
Of course this source is from a Chinese news source so I can expect a little bias toward the Chinese from it but it sounds an awful lot like the Chinese have a point.
An official from the Chinese Shrimp Industry Alliance, an organization established specially because of the dumping charges, said Chinese shrimp producers were able to sell at prices far lower than American shrimp producers because they had invested in modern technology for their shrimp farms and had lower labour costs.
“We are simply more efficient than the US industry, which mostly harvests shrimp from the sea,” he said.
Ewww, I hate hearing those words that another country may be technologically superior to the US but it’s most likely true. That’s the problem with govenrment subsidies they tend to dry up all the reasons for applying technology to a problem.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Chris of Dangerous Logic // Jul 7, 2004 at 9:20 pm
It wouldn’t have to do with, oh, I don’t know, climate differences
between the * China Sea and the waters off the US that make shrimp
farming feasible in the former but not the latter, would it?
2 Larry // Jul 8, 2004 at 5:39 pm
Chris, I gave a little thought to that but then I dismissed it. As much coastline as we have I believe that you aren’t going to find that much difference between the climate of the China Sea and the climate along portions of the Gulf Coast.
What I think may be a difference is the availability of land for anyone to start a shrimp farm. Where these farms could be located are in prime spots for residential and resort developement. The economics would be to turn the land into multi-million dollar estates or resort developements I would think.
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