VN faced with increasing trade defence investigations on rising protectionism

The ministry’s latest update showed that 28 trade defence investigations have been initiated this year, on Vietnam’s exports to 12 markets, among which 13 cases were initiated by the US.

So far, there have been 270 trade defence investigations initiated by 25 countries and territories on Vietnam’s export products, including 148 anti-dumping, 54 self-defence and 38 anti-circumvention and 30 anti-subsidy cases.

This makes 2024 the year with one of the highest number of trade defence investigation cases ever, second only to 2020 when there were 39 initiations, which demonstrates that the protectionism is increasing worldwide and the trend will continue, according to the MOIT’s Trade Remedies Authority of Vietnam.

Notably, trade defence investigations are becoming more complex. For example, the US launched its cross-border subsidy investigation on solar panels and capsules sold from Vietnam for the first time. Countries also tend to investigate and apply anti-dumping, anti-subsidy, safeguarding and anti-circumvention measures on the same product at the same time.

The MOIT said that it will continue to support industries to cope with trade defence investigations on Vietnam’s exports while strengthening early warnings so that relevant ministries, agencies, local areas and enterprises can actively prepare for the investigations as well as developing appropriate export strategies to minimise the negative impacts.

The ministry’s statistics also showed that Vietnam has initiated 30 investigations and imposed trade defence instruments on 22 import products, 16 of which are still valid.  

In 2024, Vietnam reviewed seven cases initiated in 2023, initiated investigations for three new cases, initiated reviews of three end-of-term reviews and received seven new investigation requests.

Deputy Director of Vietnam Institute of Strategy and Policy for Industry and Trade, Le Huy Khoi, said that it is necessary for Vietnam to hasten economic reforms, diversify export markets and sources of materials, as well as improving competitiveness to reduce the negative impacts from trade defence measures.

Specifically regarding the US market, for which Vietnam ran a trade surplus of US$111 billion in the first 11 months of this year, he said the risks of trade defence investigations are high, urging enterprises to renovate technology, comply with the established regulations and develop long-term strategies to export sustainably, with a focus on improving the transparency of the production process and the origin tracing system.