The Foreign Trade Protection Measures Faced By Chinese Enterprises Are More Diversified And Complicated

On September 6, 2007, the European Commission announced in the official gazette of the European Union that the European Commission had decided to conduct an anti circumvention investigation on the basis of complaints from the European Union industry that there was a phenomenon of circumvention in the transshipment of Chinese leather shoes to Europe through Macao. From the date of the announcement, the EU will register the footwear products involved in the case from Macao and conduct an anti circumvention investigation. If the anti-dumping behavior is identified, anti-dumping duties will be imposed on the leather shoes imported from Macao at the same rate as the anti-dumping rate of the products involved in the case in mainland China. The anti circumvention investigation period is 9 months. The anti-dumping duty of 10.9% on leather shoes was imposed from July 2006 to July 9, 2006. This anti circumvention investigation is likely to make our leather shoes export to Europe even worse. Once the European Union decides to impose anti-dumping duties on leather shoes imported from Macao, the enterprises of Chinese mainland exporting leather shoes to Europe through Macao are bound to be greatly affected. Since this year, the EU has not filed any anti-dumping cases against China for various reasons. However, there is still one year to go before the end of the anti-dumping duty imposed on China's leather shoes. It is thought-provoking that the EU has never relaxed its import barriers on Chinese products, but has adopted more diversified forms. Similarly, looking at the situation of trade barriers to China's export of products since this year, there were eight foreign investigations on the export products of China's light industry handicraft industry from January to September, which was similar to that of the same period last year. However, the countries registered last year were scattered. In addition to the EU's anti-dumping investigation on China's ironing board and Australia's anti-dumping investigation on China's safety glass, the rest were South Africa and Peru Developing countries such as Brazil and Brazil are mainly concentrated in the United States this year, and the forms adopted by the United States are no longer limited to anti-dumping, but tend to be more diversified and complicated, and bring greater harm to China's export enterprises. From January to September, the United States launched two 337 investigations into China's light industrial and technological products, and two combined anti subsidy and anti-dumping investigations. It is worth noting that the combined anti subsidy and anti-dumping investigations have become a new measure to restrict the import of Chinese products since the end of last year. In November 2006, the United States launched a combined anti-dumping and countervailing investigation against China's coated paper. This was the first time that the United States used such a combined investigation against China. On March 30, this year, it announced the preliminary findings of the countervailing investigation on coated paper products exported to China. It decided to apply the Countervailing Law to China and began to levy temporary countervailing duties on coated paper products exported from China to the United States. This is the first time that the anti subsidy law of the United States has been imposed on non market products for 23 years. Since then, the United States has launched four "two anti" joint investigation cases against China, including two cases of light industrial handicrafts - composite woven bags and steel wire hangers. At the same time, they expressed their dissatisfaction with the opinions of the United States Ministry of Commerce and industry on the website of the United States Chamber of Commerce and industry. However, despite the strong opposition from the Chinese government and the industry, the US side announced in March this year that the US Countervailing Law was applicable to products imported from China, and ruled to impose a countervailing duty on Chinese coated paper. This is the first time that the United States has imposed a countervailing duty on products imported from "non market economy countries". This has changed the 23 year long practice of not implementing the anti subsidy law in "non market economy countries" Trade policy. While insisting on regarding China as a "non market economy country", the US side, on the one hand, uses the data of the surrogate country to calculate the dumping margin of Chinese products and levy anti-dumping duties. On the other hand, it accuses Chinese enterprises of obtaining various subsidies and imposing countervailing duties. This method of "double taxation" on Chinese export products constitutes double discrimination and is obviously unfair. This kind of merger investigation not only increases the cost and difficulty of responding to the lawsuit, but also challenges the current system of our government. It can be seen from the above that, with the steady development of China's economy and the sustained growth of exports, the trade remedy measures taken by European and American countries to China's export products are also more diversified and complicated. Therefore, our export enterprises should actively respond from the following aspects in order to safeguard their own interests: 1. Understand the rules and make rational use of them We should fully understand the "rules of the game" of anti-dumping, countervailing, anti circumvention and other trade barriers in Europe and the United States, carefully study and use their applicable standards, pay attention to the reasonable arrangement of production and assembly procedures, and develop overseas markets with reasonable procedures and legal prices. 2. According to the WTO Agreement on subsidies and countervailing measures, subsidies should meet three conditions: subsidies are provided by the government or public institutions; the government provides financial assistance or any form of income or price support; subsidies enable enterprises or enterprises to obtain benefits. In addition, subsidies should be specific, that is, subsidies are only given to some specific industries, enterprises or regions. Subsidies are divided into prohibited subsidies, actionable subsidies and non actionable subsidies. When an enterprise is investigated for countervailing, it should first collect information about the domestic subsidies and the subsidies accepted by the enterprises. Knowing these information, we can determine whether the subsidies accepted by enterprises belong to actionable subsidies as soon as possible, so as to respond to lawsuits accurately and reduce losses. 3. The enterprise can employ a lawyer to make a strong defense in all aspects. This defense can include both procedural and substantive aspects. The best strategy of responding enterprises in countervailing investigation is to prove that: (1) there is no subsidy; (2) subsidy is minimal; or (3) subsidy is not actionable. In the process of responding to the lawsuit, enterprises can fully defend in the nature of subsidies, the damage of domestic industries, the causal relationship between subsidies and damages, and so on. The success of defense in any link may lead to the final victory. At the same time, enterprises can also cooperate with domestic importers, wholesalers, retailers and end-users in the anti subsidy investigation to jointly raise defense, so as to strengthen their own momentum. This kind of defense can cause real or potential pressure on the domestic industry and investigation authorities of the importing country, and even affect the final ruling result. 4. In order to effectively resist various foreign trade protection measures, enterprises should change their ideas, change the previous competitive strategy of low price export, actively adjust the product structure, increase the technical content of products, implement the differentiation strategy of export products, and improve their competitiveness.