USA: Louisiana's governor ask for federal assistance for shrimpers

The US shrimp industry continues to complaint about low prices for shrimps.

The situation seems so serious that

Governor Bobby Jindal has written to the U.S. the Commerce Secretary and to the Chair of the U.S. the International Trade Commissionthe to open an investigation into the "trade practices" of foreign countries that may be unfairly manipulating the shrimp industry's marketplace.

The Governor's letter was triggered by strikes and protests by shrimpers, complaining about the rock bottom prices they get for their harvest.

Interesting to note is that the U.S. did impose anti-dumping duties on imports of shrimps from a number of developing countries (see my post of 26/04/09 USA: will US fishermen survive without subsidies?). As mentioned in this post , the U.S. shrimpers have received subsidies coming from the funds collected by the U.S. Customs when applying the anti-dumping duties.

Furthermore the Governor has been quoted as saying:

“I’ll be issuing an executive order to make sure our state agencies are buying Louisiana shrimp to the extent that they are not doing so today, to make sure they are not buying frozen or imported product,”

Finally, I would like to bring to mind another post on Louisana where I mentioned that subsidies related to "fisheries disaster" were to be provided to the State's fishermen (12/06/09 USA: Lousiana providing subsidies because of a "fisheries disaster")

Here is the link to the official text of the letter to the federal authorities:

http://wwwprd.doa.louisiana.gov/LaNews/PublicPages/Dsp_PressRelease_Display.cfm?PressReleaseID=2176&Rec_ID=1

And here a news article where you will find the above statement by Mr Jindal:

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/55999647.html