Under the decision, Vietnamese businesses have to pay a high tax rate of US$4.22 per kilo while the selling price of tra fish on the American market is much lower than the tax.

VASEP Vice President Nguyen Huu Dung said that the anti-dumping tariff is not reasonable as the DOC selected the Philippines - a country with few fish breeding areas - to compare with Vietnam. Meanwhile, aquaculture in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region has developed very strongly thanks to huge investment in breeding and processing procedures and low input costs.

To cope with the situation, VASEP is now co-ordinating with relevant agencies and businesses to ask the DOC to reconsider its anti-dumping taxes on tra fish imported from Vietnam.

According to regulations, the DOC makes an annual decision on whether to increase or reduce anti-dumping taxes for Vietnamese businesses. Previously, the DOC had imposed low anti-dumping tariffs of between 0 and 0.52 percent on Vietnam’s tra fish, which helped to facilitate the flow of tra fish into the American market.