 Dumping lawsuits still loom over Vietnamese products
Vietnam+ - 3/10/2010 8:48:34 PM
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Despite hopeful signs of a rally in
global economy, domestic enterprises were warned to remain cautious, as
a new wave of anti-dumping lawsuits from the US and the EU is hitting
Vietnam.
Tran Huu Huynh, Deputy Secretary General
and Head of the Legal Department of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and
Industry (VCCI), sounded the alarm at a workshop in Hanoi on March 10.
In these two major markets, new threats, such as those against wooden
furniture, have driven down Vietnam’s exports, even as existing
lawsuits against its seafood, plastic bags, footwear, bicycles and
compact lamps have not yet been settled, Huynh said.
Nguyen Thi Thu Trang from the Trade Remedies Council (TRC) under the
VCCI said there have been 42 lawsuits against Vietnamese products to
date, posing a serious threat to Vietnamese exports.
Adding insult to injury, a number of countries consider such suits an
effective tool to protect their domestic industries from low-priced,
made-in-Vietnam products, she added.
Dr. Peter John Koenig, senior lawyer from the US Squire Sanders law
firm, warned that the number of anti-dumping lawsuits against
Vietnamese products in the US was likely to increase as the Southeast
Asian country is no longer immune to these protectionist tactics.
He advised Vietnamese exporters to be cautious, pointing out that most
Vietnamese enterprises brought beforecourts on anti-dumping lawsuits in
2009 stood behind bar for the first time in the US.
Consequently, not a few numbers of enterprises did not know what to do
and faced problems in the proceedings, said the attorney from one of
the strongest and geographically diverse law firms in the world.
Many enterprises have dodged the suits or refused to cooperate with
their professional associations, thus suffering unfavourable results,
he explained.
A lack of information and an absence of a legal partner network in
small local markets is another problem for enterprises being sued to
find good attorneys for their cases.
The TRC has called for assistance from the Vietnamese Bureaus of Commerce in the local markets just in case./.
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