Trade remedies are measures that a country uses to create a fair competitive environment between imported goods and domestically produced goods through import restrictions on one or several types of imported goods being dumped or receiving sudden increases in subsidies, causing or threatening to cause serious damage to the domestic industry. Four trade defense measures include: Anti-dumping, Anti-subsidy, Safeguard measures, and Anti-circumvention of trade defense.
On December 28, 2023, the Minister of Industry and Trade issued Circular 42/2023/TT-BCT (“Circular 42”) amending and supplementing a number of articles of Circular 37/2019/TT-BCT (“Circular 37”) details a number of contents on trade remedies with some notable contents as follows:
1. Remove 2 cases of imported goods considered for exemption from trade defense measures
Circular 42 abolished 02 cases of imported goods that were previously considered for exemption from applying trade remedies specified in Article 10 of Circular 37, including:
- Similar goods and directly competitive goods produced domestically do not meet the volume of domestic use; and
- Imported goods are included in the total amount requested for exemption for research, development and other non-commercial purposes.
According to ATA's assessment, the elimination of these two cases is completely appropriate because the determination of the ability to satisfy the "adequacy" of the goods in the market with the determination of the import purpose of the goods in the total quantity of goods. is very difficult, if not very easy to take advantage of with inaccurate or inappropriate reports and declarations. Therefore, to ensure overall accuracy and fairness, these cases will still have to be included in the investigation to determine whether or not trade remedies are applied.
Accordingly, the scope of goods considered for exemption from applying trade remedies under the new regulations will remain in the following 04 cases:
- Goods cannot be produced domestically;
- Goods that have characteristics different from domestically produced goods that cannot be replaced by those domestically produced goods;
- Goods are special products of similar goods or directly competitive goods produced domestically;
- Similar goods and directly competitive goods produced domestically cannot be sold on the domestic market under the same normal conditions or in cases of force majeure leading to a shortage of supply from the domestic manufacturing industry.
2. Clarifying the total duration of exemption from trade remedy measures
Circular 42 clearly stipulates that the total exemption period from applying trade remedies does not exceed the effective period of the corresponding trade remedy measure.
Every year, the Ministry of Industry and Trade reviews the exemption period for applications received at the time: (i) there is a decision to apply temporary trade remedies; (ii) there is a decision to apply official trade remedies; and (iii) March 15 and September 15 every year.
In case an enterprise submits an additional exemption application, the additional exemption period is calculated according to the exemption period of the original exemption decision.
Circular 42 takes effect from February 16, 2024.
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