US extends anti-dumping duty on Indian preserved mushrooms for 5 years

The US International Trade Commission (USITC) has extended the restrictive duty on preserved mushrooms as it extended the anti-dumping duty on Indian preserved mushrooms for another five years.

• It is likely to impact domestic exporters as the US is a major export destination for India.
• In 2014-15, India exported mushrooms worth 16.08 million dollars and during April-May this fiscal the exports aggregated at 1.63 million dollars.
• Indian mushrooms are exported to the U.S., UAE, Russia and Israel.
• India’s mushroom exports to the US declined to $0.11 million in 2014-15 from $24.76 million in 2011-12.
• Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Jammu & Kashmir are the major states which are producing the commodity. Solan in Himachal Pradesh is popular as ‘Mushroom City of India’.
• ‘Preserved mushrooms’ refer to mushrooms that have been prepared or preserved by cleaning, blanching, and sometimes slicing and cutting.
• ‘Anti-Dumping Duty’ is a protectionist tariff that a domestic government imposes on foreign imports that it believes are priced below fair market value. In the United States, anti-dumping duties are imposed by the Department of Commerce and often exceed 100%.
• Anti-dumping duties vary from product to product and from country to country. Countries initiate anti-dumping probes to check if domestic industry has been hurt because of a surge in below-cost imports. As a counter-measure, they impose duties under the multilateral WTO regime.
• As a result of the Commission’s affirmative determinations, the existing orders on imports of this product from Chile, China, India, and Indonesia will remain in place.