A steel production line for export. From 2004 to July 2024, Việt Nam's steel product exports have faced 75 trade defence lawsuits, including 43 anti-dumping cases. VNA/VNS Photo
HANOI: Increasing trade-defence investigations against Vietnamese exports are forcing companies to increase their capacity to respond.
Businesses are being advised to not just closely monitor investigations, but also coordinate with relevant government agencies, use early warning tools and have a strategy for responding more proactively.
According to the Industry and Trade Ministry (MoIT), it is necessary to continue to promote early warnings on trade remedies against Vietnamese exports and to also maintain support for those responding to trade-defence actions abroad.
Experts said increasing the capacity to respond to trade-defence measures is extremely important for Vietnamese manufacturing and exporting enterprises to proactively and promptly respond in order to protect exports from Vietnam.
“During trade defence investigations in other countries, domestic enterprises still had limitations in coordinating and sharing information with competent authorities at home and abroad,” said Associate Professor Dr Nguyen Ngoc Ha, director of the Institute for Innovation Research at the Foreign Trade University.
In addition, the awareness and ability of enterprises to handle trade investigations were still limited, leading to enterprises not always complying with the deadlines set by foreign investigating agencies, Ha said.
Other difficulties were weak coordination mechanisms and lack of financial mechanisms for handling cases of trade-remedy investigations.
Ha recommended that the government improve coordination and build a financial mechanism to support companies in handling such cases.
The government should also enhance information and early warnings to respond to the trend of increasing trade-remedy investigations.
Furthermore, it was necessary to build a database to facilitate businesses seeking information about the measures and the countries that apply them to Vietnamese exports.
According to the Trade Remedies Authority’s survey in 2023, 36% of businesses who responded said they had only briefly researched any trade remedies, while only 17% did thorough research.
About 36% of the businesses heard about the trade remedies, and 11% of enterprises hardly knew about such actions.
Therefore, it is important that businesses proactively learn and raise their awareness about trade-defence measures.
In addition, companies should strengthen coordination with government management agencies to work on how to respond.
The US Department of Commerce has received a request for an anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigation into corrosion-resistant steel products. Vietnam is one of 10 countries exporting the products being investigated, according to the Trade Remedies Authority under MoIT.
According to the US International Trade Commission, in 2023, Vietnam exported US$242mil worth of the steel products to the United States, accounting for about 7% of the total corrosion-resistant steel exports in the market.
In August 2024, India’s Directorate General of Trade Remedies initiated an anti-dumping investigation on hot-rolled steel coil originating from or exported from Vietnam.
“From 2004 to July 2024, Vietnam’s steel product exports faced 75 trade defence lawsuits, including 43 anti-dumping lawsuits”, said Dinh Quoc Thai, general secretary of the Vietnam Steel Association. — Viet Nam News/ANN
