| Maintaining an advantage for exporting goods thanks to early warning of trade defense Early warning: Proactively preventing and responding to trade defense lawsuits |
Up to now, Vietnam's export goods have faced 234 trade defense investigations in 24 different markets; the investigated goods are increasingly diverse. In order to support businesses to be prepared in advance and be more proactive in handling and responding to trade defense investigations, early warning plays a very important role. Ms. Nguyen Thu Trang - Director of the WTO and Integration Center, Vietnam Federation of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) discussed this issue.
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| Early warning information will help businesses proactively respond more effectively to trade defense lawsuits. Photo: VNA |
Can you point out some outstanding features of trade defense cases against Vietnamese export goods in recent times?
From 2017 - the time when the protectionist and defensive trends in the world increased - until now, about 6 years, the trade defense cases in this period compared to the cases we faced before have three main different characteristics, and these three characteristics all cause difficulties and hardships for Vietnamese export enterprises.
Firstly , the number of trade defense cases in recent years has increased much faster than in the previous period. According to our statistics, from 2017 to now, the number of trade defense cases that Vietnamese export goods have faced in foreign markets accounts for over 52% of the total number of trade defense cases that we have faced in the past 30 years. Of which, the number of cases of anti-avoidance of trade defense measures that we have been sued for from 2017 to now accounts for nearly 60%. total number of anti-avoidance cases we have faced to date.
Second , about the products. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the products that we were sued for were mainly those that we had large export turnover and were strong in export or were key export products, such as seafood or footwear. But in the recent period, the number of products and sectors of the industries that were sued for trade defense has expanded much more. Our statistics show that, up to now, there are nearly 40 products that have been sued for trade defense, including products that we have just explored and the turnover is not too large.
Third is the market characteristics. Previously, only our key export markets were sued for trade defense, but now we can see that other markets, including our new markets, have a very large number of trade defense cases. Of the total 235 cases up to now, the US market accounts for 23% of the cases, India accounts for 14%, Turkey accounts for 10%, followed by Canada, EU, Philippines, Indonesia. We can see that in all markets, we are sued for trade defense and a total of 24 markets have filed trade defense lawsuits against Vietnam.
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| Ms. Nguyen Thu Trang - Director of WTO and Integration Center, Vietnam Federation of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) |
Some markets have traditionally used trade defense tools as one of the solutions to counter the pressure of imported goods from outside. In addition, during this period, some markets experienced economic fluctuations, they felt disadvantaged, and competition was difficult, so they also increased trade defense lawsuits.
Regarding some industries that are sued more, for example, compared to other products, iron, steel or aluminum, although not key export products of Vietnam, are the product groups that attract the most trade defense lawsuits in the world. Therefore, we are also sued more.
In addition, there are products in which we are increasing our competitiveness and putting pressure on domestic industries in export markets, perhaps because we are taking advantage of tariff incentives through free trade agreements, or perhaps because we are also improving our capacity, so those products are facing a greater risk of being sued for trade defense.
How do you assess the role of early warning information on trade defense in supporting businesses in responding to lawsuits so far ?
Trade defense litigation is a very complex legal and technical process. Through our monitoring, most of the cases where we have not effectively appealed the lawsuits are due to our being passive, having too little preparation time and being surprised in responding. Therefore, the early warning mechanism allows us to see the risks from afar so that we can prepare early and it has clearly helped us solve a problem that most businesses face: not having enough time.
For some markets, we are still subject to the “non-market economy” mechanism in trade defense investigations, so in addition to the common difficulties like all exporters in these markets, we also have difficulty in responding and calculating many technical issues, which takes even more time. Therefore, in this perspective, the early warning mechanism is even more meaningful to us.
Therefore, early warning helps us to know the risk early and prepare very early, from the first signs, thereby helping businesses have more conditions and we can hope for good results, minimizing damage. I believe that, for the 18 specific items that we are warning about, there are cases where the incident did not happen in the end. That is a very good thing, but the incident did not happen could also be because we had warnings and businesses made certain adjustments in their business strategies to not export too strongly to that market, thereby we avoided being initiated an investigation.
In the coming time, what solutions do you think are needed from both state management agencies and businesses and associations so that we can be more proactive in responding to trade defense measures?
Firstly, the nature of foreign trade defense lawsuits is legal struggles, requiring professional participants and businesses are required to use professional legal and economic consulting services from trade defense experts, which often require services in the countries where they are suing us. However, we must understand the problem to have the right behavior and coordinate well with the units, and proactively choose a consulting unit to coordinate well with the consulting unit as well as related units.
Second, trade defense cases are disputes over economic interests between the domestic production industry of the importing country and our export production industry. Therefore, in addition to the story of each enterprise having to prove itself - because technical calculations are based on data of each enterprise, each shipment, there is also a common struggle in which enterprises must coordinate with each other, with associations and with state management agencies so that we can coordinate and fight together.
From the perspective of support from state agencies, specifically the Department of Trade Defense, Ministry of Industry and Trade, we see that the first support that businesses need is warning information. And when an unfortunate incident occurs, information related to the incident is also very important. When the importing country conducts an investigation, they may inform businesses directly, or they may not, but they will always inform our state management agency, the Department of Trade Defense, Ministry of Industry and Trade.
Therefore, all information about the case, all requirements and deadlines can be found at the Department of Trade Defense, so when an incident occurs, businesses need to closely monitor information and instructions from the Department of Trade Defense related to the case. In addition, the support of the Department of Trade Defense with associations and businesses to participate in each step of the trade defense lawsuit process is very important, especially in cases where the role of state agencies is indispensable, such as anti-subsidy cases.
Thank you!
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