Socialist Republic of Vietnam

The New York Times, July 25, 2003

The United States government has just added a final flourish of hypocrisy to its efforts to crush the Vietnamese catfish industry under a mountain of protectionism. The Vietnamese, after doing well enough to capture a fair share of the American market, have been declared trade violators deserving permanent, prohibitive tariffs by the United States International Trade Commission.

The case against the Vietnamese was brutally rigged by American fishing and political interests. It stands as an appalling demonstration to striving commercial nations that all the talk of globalization has not reined in the old power politics of marketeers in the United States, Europe and Japan. Their thumbs remain all over the scales of free trade.

No convincing evidence was presented that Vietnam is dumping its fish on the American market at prices below cost. To the contrary, a competitive edge was clearly won by hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese fishermen who were encouraged by the United States itself to set aside old wartime enmities and enter the emerging world market. The campaign that threatens to ruin them is rooted in myopic greed and blatant xenophobia. In one Orwellian tactic, labels for the fillets imported from Vietnam — genuine, obvious catfish — were denied the use of that very word in our markets by a well-timed amendment slipped into a Congressional appropriations bill.

Thus, the Vietnamese catfish can be called only "basa" or "tra" in this country. And they will also be saddled with punitive tariffs. The next time an American delegation sets off to preach the dogma of free trade abroad, poor nations would be within their rights to thumb their noses. Meanwhile, diners in search of egalitarian fare should consider demanding basa and tra by name as a rebuff to this nation's protectionist bottom feeders.