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Vietnamese Antidumping Update
November 24, 2008

The Department of Commerce announced Nov. 21 that in the final Bush administration review of apparel imports from Vietnam it has found insufficient evidence to warrant self-initiating an antidumping investigation. Assistant Secretary for Import Administration David Spooner said this review “reveals that prices of Vietnamese apparel are in line with, and in most cases even exceed, other major suppliers, including Central America.”

The DOC examined import data for five different apparel product groups from Vietnam – trousers, shirts, underwear, swimwear and sweaters – for the six-month period February through July 2008. This review found that during that period the U.S. did not import from Vietnam apparel under 208 of nearly 500 ten-digit Harmonized Tariff Schedule lines within the five groups. Many of the remaining ten-digit HTS lines had rising unit values, further indicating that dumping is not taking place. The DOC also compared trends in unit values and import levels to other suppliers of these products, including Bangladesh, the DR-CAFTA countries, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand. Based on this comparison, the department concluded that there was insufficient evidence to self-initiate an AD investigation.

The DOC will continue to post import data for these product groups on the Vietnam Textile and Apparel Import Monitoring Program Web site until Jan. 20, 2009.