EC adopts provisional anti-dumping duties on Sino -Viet shoes
25 Mar '06
4 min read
This means they can and often do leave the competing export much cheaper than the European equivalent. This is not true of the rules used by the United States, China and others - nor do these countries take account of the wider public interest through a "Community interest-type" rule. We can't use anti-dumping procedures to stop tough but fair competition.
This case concerns just nine pairs of shoes from every 100 pairs bought by Europeans.
A duty would add about 1.5 euro on average import prices of 8.5 euro for leather shoes that retail between 30-100 euros.
Leather footwear import prices to the EU over the last five years have fallen by more than 20% but consumer prices have remained stable and even risen slightly.
So the Commission believes that there is some margin within the supply chain to absorb a small duty on import costs by spreading it across product ranges and the distribution chain and the impact of measures on consumer prices will be minimal.
The shoes issue is not the textiles issue. The textile issue concerned fairly traded textile imports subject to a dramatic and sudden increase in volume.
The European Commission never suggested that Chinese textile exports were unfair or traded illegally. It acted with the Chinese to cushion the impact of a massive shift in global trading patterns in textiles.
By 2008 that cushion will be gone. Leather footwear is being state-subsidized and dumped. This is unacceptable under WTO rules and the European Union has a legal right to protect European producers against such practice.
marketing@alchempro.com
