Vietnam’s shipments to US to face more barriers

Numerous trade barriers will likely go up stateside, choking off the flow off goods into the Northern American market, especially from ‘non-market economies’ like Vietnam, a practitioner said in Hanoi on Wednesday.

William Barriger, a legal counsellor working alongside the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) since 2003 over the antidumping tax imposed on Vietnam’s shrimp, said an estimated 14 new trade barriers would go up in the US

The lawyer of the law firm Winston & Strawn said at a meeting at the VCCI Office that the Secretary of the US Department of Commerce in late August had announced new proposals to aid American exports related to the antidumping tax. These proposals, with the primary goal to bolster US exports in the next five years, will in effect create new trade barriers and will defend punitive duties on certain imported products, Barriger said.

He informed the audience that the US considered Vietnam a venue of concern when initiating antidumping lawsuits as Vietnam is also emerging as a production base besides China.

Many commodities originating from China are imposed anti-dumping tariffs stateside, so many manufacturers want to move their production facilities to Vietnam, he said. Any surge in imports into the US from Vietnam may trigger questions on goods dumping, the legal adviser said.

The US Department of Trade in its new proposals also changed the method of calculating antidumping tariffs with an aim to slap higher punitive taxes on imported products seen as being dumped in the US soil, according to Barriger. For example, he said, Vietnam’s tra fish has recently been imposed higher punitive rate as the US chooses Bangladesh for calculating the production cost to apply to Vietnam’s products. – Saigon Times

Tags: Vietnam shipments to US, Vietnam shipping industry