Producing zinc-coated steel sheets at a factory of Hoa Sen Group in Nghe An province (Photo: VNA) Hanoi (VNA) – Amid rising tradebarriers, experts have said Vietnamese firms should improve their awareness oftrade remedies and appeals processes.
Chu Thang Trung, Deputy Director of the TradeRemedies Authority of Vietnam (TRAV) under the Ministry of Industry and Trade(MoIT), said with growing global trade liberalisation, traditional tradebarriers like tariffs are gradually removed, commitments to more open marketsare promoted while bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements increase.
This is why more trade remedies are being usedby countries as a legal tool to raise import tariffs and protect domesticproduction, he said.
He noted that there have been 132 trade remedycases against Vietnamese exports so far. They include 25 cases launched by theUS, 20 by Turkey and 15 by India. Meanwhile, 78 of them are antidumping cases,12 subsidies and countervailing measures, 17 anti-circumvention cases and 25are safeguard cases.
Steel products are most vulnerable to traderemedies as they are involved in almost half of the antidumping cases and 75percent of countervailing cases. They are followed by fibre and agro-fisheryproducts.
TRAV statistics show that as of May 2018, morethan 400 antidumping and countervailing duty orders of the US Department ofCommerce (DoC), 10 involving Vietnam, had took effect.
Additionally, Vietnam is currently subject to 17anti-circumvention cases of other countries. Sixteen of these cases werelaunched over the products allegedly originating in China.
Recently, the DoC ruled that corrosion-resistantsteel (CORE) and certain cold-rolled steel flat products (CRS) imported fromVietnam produced from substrate originating in China are circumventingantidumping and countervailing duty orders on CORE and CRS imported from China.
On June 12, the US received a request forinvestigation into the antidumping and countervailing duty circumvention ofVietnamese CORE, suspected of evading duties on similar products from Taiwan(China) and the Republic of Korea, and CRS with suspected circumvention ofduties on similar products from the Republic of Korea.
Australia also started an antidumping probe intoimports of steel wire rod in coil form from Vietnam.
Deputy Director of the MoIT’s Export-ImportDepartment Tran Thanh Hai said slow recognition of the country’s market economystatus is the main thing exposing Vietnamese businesses to trade barriers.
Only 69 countries have recognised Vietnam’smarket economy so far. However, major importers such as the US, the EU, Canada,Brazil and Turkey haven’t done this, so they have different dumping margincalculation methods, considerably impacting Vietnamese firms, he added.
Some business associations said the media inforeign markets have continually reported on import origin fraud, so theysuspected that a large volume of items from other countries had been moved toVietnam to falsify origin of goods to take advantage of preferential tariffs onVietnamese commodities.
James Maeder, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretaryfor Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Operations at the DOC’s Enforcement andCompliance, said in many trade remedy cases, exporting companies successfullyproved their innocence and were not subject to duties.
Therefore, exporters should have a good grasp oflegal regulations in the countries initiating probes and comply with proceduresin those countries, he said.
Tran Thanh Hai noted the launch of investigationson Vietnamese goods by a country may lead to similar actions regarding the sameimports from Vietnam by other countries.
MoIT Deputy Minister Tran Quoc Khanh said tominimise the risk of being sued and raise their chances of success in traderemedy cases, businesses should equip themselves with knowledge about relevantregulations and contact associations and State agencies to learn about exportmarkets.
He also recommended domestic firms enhancerelations with foreign partners whose interests will also be affected if traderemedy cases are initiated, diversify markets and products and compete usinghigh quality and good trademarks instead of low prices.
Additionally, they should cooperate withinvestigation agencies and work together to respond to trade remedy cases, Khanhadded.-VNA
VNA
