HANOI – 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 counselor 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 U.S.
The lawyer of the law firm Winston & Strawn said at a meeting at the VCCI Office that the Secretary of the U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. from Vietnam may trigger questions on goods dumping, the legal adviser said.
The U.S. 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 U.S. soil, according to Barriger. For example, he said, Vietnam’s tra fish has recently been imposed higher punitive rate as the U.S. chooses Bangladesh for calculating the production cost to apply to Vietnam’s products.
