Absurd to impose anti-dumping duty on footwear – experts

24 Nov '09

2 min read

The European Union plans to renew anti-dumping measures on imported footwear from China and Vietnam, allowing governments of its member countries to impose duties on products imported from those countries whose export prices are below local market prices.

Such measures are normally used to protect large-scale industries, such as steel and chemicals, but expert's term measures imposed on footwear as absurd, since footwear is not an industry of strategic importance.

Footwear market is an open global market and fierce competition will help erode high profit margins, which can ultimately benefit only the consumer. The Chinese and Vietnamese footwear manufacturers are in a way, subsiding, the purchases of European consumers, aver experts.

In fact, the EU has unilaterally imposed tariffs with the purpose to refuse recognition of market economy status to China and Vietnam and the European Commission wants to “prove” that these countries are dumping footwear, by comparing export costs of Chinese and Vietnamese footwear with production costs in other regions.

However, it has to be noted that competitiveness of Chinese and Vietnamese footwear and shoe industry ranks first in the world, so any comparison would show that their production costs are at low level. But by imposing anti-dumping duty, the EU is depriving its consumers of low cost footwear.

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India

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