As Vietnam continues to expand its international integration, increasing both the quality and quantity of international exports, the possibility that Vietnamese goods will be subject to an international trade remedy investigation will also gradually increase.
According to a report from the Import-Export Department, Ministry of Industry and Trade of Vietnam, Vietnam has had a total of 226 cases of Vietnamese products and goods subject to trade remedy investigation by the end of 2022. In which, only in 2022, Vietnam was the subject of 17 new investigation cases initiated by the Foreign Trade Remedies Agency, subject to investigation or review.
In which, the most investigated subject of Vietnamese goods is the United States. Not only for Vietnam, but this country also uses trade remedies with many other countries exporting to the US market as an effective tool to protect the value of domestic goods and the interests of the US domestic manufacturers.
According to the WTO, by the end of June 2022, the US has investigated a total of 1,177 cases and applied 832 trade remedy measures. In which, Vietnam belongs to 53 cases of trade remedy investigation for Vietnamese exports, accounting for about 25% of the total number of cases initiated by international trade remedy agencies with Vietnamese goods to date.
Trade remedies including anti-dumping, anti-subsidy and safeguard measures and a particular measure of anti-circumvention of trade remedies are effective tools that the WTO allows members to have rights to increase duties or restrict imports appropriately if it is determined that the increase in imports causes damage or threatens the domestic industry.
Increasing number of cases of Vietnamese goods under international trade remedy investigation
In 2022, the US initiated 12 new investigations with Vietnam. The main investigations are anti-circumvention investigation of trade remedies with steel products, cabinets, solar panels, staplers, etc.
In addition, some other prominent countries/regions with notable trade remedy investigations against Vietnam are EU which are currently applying only safeguard measures related to steel products to Vietnam and India has investigated 30 cases of trade remedy against Vietnamese products.
When a country is subject to a trade remedy duty, because of the attractiveness of irreplaceable trade benefits, those countries will carry out tricks to evade the trade remedy duties for commercial benefits.
A typical case can be mentioned when the US imposed anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties on Chinese products and materials for manufacturing solar panels from 2012. Then, for more than a decade, China has found many ways to evade these two duties, exporting components to four countries in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, and from there export to the United States.
Although the trade remedies circumvention behavior has been identified, for the sake of green energy, the Joe Biden administration had issued an order to suspend the imposition of trade remedy anti-circumvention duties on four Vietnamese countries.
Basically, it is very difficult to evade trade remedy duties at the current time of focusing on trade supervision because developed countries around the world have their own measures to monitor the movement and transportation of goods and thereby, identify circumvention behavior. It is because of this reality that Vietnam needs to pay attention and avoid indirectly or directly implementing acts of circumvention, dumping and subsidies in trade to gain short-term benefits.
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