Vietnam’s Steel Exports likely to Suffer Ahead amid Rise in Anti-Dumping Duty Investigations

Vietnam which has become a hot spot for anti-dumping or countervailing duties circumvention through trade re-routing, especially for countries like China, is now facing the brunt in the form of trade restrictions on its steel exports being imposed by various countries.

According to the reports, by the end of August 2018, there were 128 trade defence lawsuits to initiate investigations into Vietnam’s exported goods. Of these, 85% of the trade defence lawsuits involved the steel industry.

Of the 78 anti-dumping investigations Vietnam has encountered in the past two years, 37 cases were related to iron and steel, accounting for 47% of the goods in question as per Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Along with this, it is being expected that the number of lawsuits will continue to increase in the coming years as the US-China trade war has shown no sign of subsidence.
As trade protectionism rises around the world, the domestic steel industry could be targeted by several markets, and these lawsuits will directly affect the exportability of Vietnamese steel.

In the first ten months (Jan-Oct) of this year, Vietnam produced over 20 MnT of steel, posting a year-on-year rise of 17.7% according to the Vietnam Steel Association. The sale of steel reached over 18 MnT, up 27.7%, of which, exports stood at more than 3.9 MnT, up 32% y-o-y basis. However, this export number is likely to fall in the coming year ahead.

Despite an increase in number of lawsuits and an anti-dumping tax imposed from abroad, as well as the increasingly fierce competition in the domestic market, Vietnam steel industry still targets to grow more than 20% in this year. Thus, in order to achieve the goal, industry experts believe that country’s enterprises need to improve the efficiency of production, focus on market diversification, and technical improvement for growth and sustainable development. The steel companies should optimise the scale of production with closed process and should make careful investment research on Vietnamese products which have not been produced and has great development potential.