European Association For Foreign Trade: EU Anti-Dumping Decisions Should Be More Pparent

As China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) has committed to the expiration of the terms of the "substitute country" of anti-dumping, the dispute between China and Europe on the principle of "substitute country" and the so-called "market economy status issue" have been heated up.

In November 9th, the European Commission formally submitted proposals to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union to amend its anti-dumping legal system to fulfill its obligations under the fifteenth provision of the WTO protocol.

Although the proposal abolished the list of "non market economy countries", the new method proposed by the European Commission replaced the concept and standard of "non market economy" with the concept and standard of "market distortion", and did not fundamentally cancel the practice of "substitute country".

In November 30th, Christian Ewert, director general of the European foreign trade association, representing the interests of European importers and retailers, interviewed the first finance company at the China Europe Business Forum, saying that the European Commission had many discussions on whether China could gain market economy status in December. The European trade association is pushing the European Union to enhance pparency in making decisions related to anti-dumping, including Ai Weide.

"For example, how anti-dumping is calculated, and when the EU makes these decisions, it is more like a black box, and the whole process should be more pparent."

In Ai Weide's view, the EU's decision to make anti-dumping or countervailing decisions against China is not pparent enough, and the EU should increase pparency when making any decisions.

On this issue, he and his team have submitted the EU road map to the EU trade commissioner, and together with other EU agencies, voice the EU's decision to improve pparency.

In fact, a previous internal report to the European Parliament showed that even the most authoritative Economic Research Institute in Germany had no ability to prove that "China's low cost advantage or dumping behavior" really exists.

As pointed out by Francois GODEMENT, a European expert on China's Foreign Relations Committee, behind the symbolic economic significance of the "market economy status" for the European Union, what is really important is the EU's anti-dumping measures. Gu Deming,

Ai Weide said that the APO (Administrative Protective Orders) system is a good reference for the European Commission to enhance pparency.

The system allows the public to query the relevant departments of the United States to make the evaluation information of anti-dumping and countervailing decisions, and the process is relatively pparent.

In order to better promote the EU's pparency in decision-making, Ai Weide often held discussions with the commissioners of the European Commission.

"The meeting is still effective. The European Commission has stated that it will seriously consider our proposal.

EU trade experts agree that pparency must be enhanced, but whether the final plan is satisfactory remains to be assessed, at least we are optimistic now.

He said he hoped that the EU's pparency in 2017 would be significantly improved.

Under this background, will free trade between China and Europe be affected?

Ai Weide told the first financial reporter that Trump's withdrawal from the TPP negotiations had no direct impact on the free trade between China and Europe.

"It has no effect on China itself, but it may be a good thing."

He acknowledged that the EU's trade protectionism is on the rise, but Sino EU trade has a closer relationship and stronger foundation than Sino US trade.

"You know,

This is the key to fighting poverty and achieving prosperity. This is true for everyone.

Some people think that China has stolen the EU's job opportunities, but this is not true.

Ai Weide said that the reduction of job opportunities is due to the improvement of automation.

For example, the Foxconn factory has reduced tens of thousands of jobs because robots have taken the place of labor.

In addition, the EU also has many negative comments on China's iron and steel overcapacity problem, but these bases are not sure whether it is true or not.

"10 years ago, the EU also had an overcapacity of steel production, so the European Union has had similar experience, but the solution of each country is different."

For example, he said that in order to cope with the challenge of overcapacity of steel and iron, the merger and reorganization of Baosteel and WISCO caused 50 thousand workers to lose their jobs, all of which needed corresponding solutions.

On the European Union's anti-dumping investigations into China, Ai Weide added: "the total volume of bilateral trade between China and Europe is about 500 billion euros per year, and the case involving anti-dumping is only 20~30 billion.

The proportion is not big. "

Faced with the obstacles encountered by Chinese enterprises in investing in the European Union, Ai Weide believes that, in large part, there has been a reversal in recent years, that is, China's investment in the EU has exceeded the EU's investment in China.

As Chinese companies are investing more and more frequently in the EU, the EU has been vigilant against the moves of Chinese companies to acquire local technology companies.

It is worth mentioning that negotiations between China EU FTA and China EU bilateral investment agreement are in progress.

According to public information, if the Sino EU FTA is reached, bilateral trade between China and Europe will double in 2030 on the basis of 567 billion 200 million US dollars in 2011, exceeding the trade growth dividend brought by TTIP (cross the Atlantic trade and investment partnership agreement).

Woodk, chairman of the China EU Chamber of Commerce, said before that he hoped that China and Europe could complete consultations on China EU bilateral investment agreement including market opening and reciprocal reciprocity in 2017.

China's official data show that in the first 10 months of 2016, the total value of bilateral trade between China and Europe was close to 3 trillion yuan, up 2.3% over the same period last year, which is better than the overall performance of China's foreign trade in the same period.

At the recent Hamburg summit, Li Yizhong, former Minister of China Federation of industrial economy and Minister of industry and information technology, said that two-way investment between China and Europe continued to grow. In 2015, China's direct investment in Europe (FDI) reached 23 billion US dollars, up 44% over the same period last year. In the month of 1~8 this year, the EU's investment in China grew by 40% over the same period last year.