Two years after it began monitoring Vietnamese apparel imports, the U.S. Department of Commerce ruled Nov. 21 that there is insufficient evidence to warrant self-initiating an antidumping investigation.
The ruling removed a potential disaster for the sporting goods industry which is increasingly looking to Vietnam as an alternative to China for sourcing, but sheds little light on how the government will proceed on Chinese imports once textile and apparel quotas expire at years end.
The DOC began monitoring Vietnamese imports in January 2007 at the urging of senators in the Carolinas concerned the imports would flood into the United States after Vietnam entered the World Trade Organization (WTO). Congressional Democrats and President-elect Barack Obama have since said they favor extending a similar program next year to ensure Chinese imports dont hurt U.S. textile interests after global textile and apparel quotas expire Dec. 31. The most current government data indicate Chinese textile and fabric imports rose 32.42% and 15.28% respectively in the first nine months of 2008, while apparel imports fell 2.73%.
“The China monitoring program is going to be a powerful tool for the U.S. textile industry to begin filing product-specific (Sec 337) safeguard requests and/or for the Obama Administration to self initiate antidumping cases,” said Alex Boian, director of trade policy at the Outdoor Industry Association.
