The Ministry of Industry and Trade will study and analyze the arguments in the DOC's Vietnam Economic Assessment Report to supplement and complete the arguments to submit a dossier requesting the DOC to reconsider Vietnam's market economy status.

Immediately after the US Department of Commerce (DOC) announced that it would continue to not recognize Vietnam as a market economy, on August 2, 2024, the Ministry of Industry and Trade said that it would study and analyze the arguments in the US Department of Commerce's Vietnam Economic Assessment Report to supplement and complete the arguments to submit a dossier requesting the DOC to reconsider Vietnam's market economy status.

Along with that, the Ministry of Industry and Trade will accompany Vietnamese enterprises exporting to the US market in anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations to ensure the highest benefits for the Vietnamese business community.

The fact that the US has not recognized Vietnam as a market economy means that businesses exporting goods to the US will continue to be discriminated against in anti-dumping and subsidy investigations.

Because, the actual production costs of Vietnamese enterprises cannot be used to calculate the dumping margin but must use the "replacement value" of a third country.

In 2023, the export turnover of goods to the US will reach 97 billion USD, down about 13 billion USD compared to 2022, due to the impact of the global economic and trade downturn. Of which, the export of electronics, machinery and equipment, textiles, footwear, wood and wood products and seafood to the US accounts for a large turnover.

Currently, 72 countries have recognized Vietnam as having a market economy, including major economies such as: UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand...

Vietnam has also participated in 17 bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements with more than 60 partners across continents.

Meanwhile, according to statistics from the World Trade Organization (WTO), the US is currently the world's leading country in investigating and applying trade defense measures and is also the country that investigates and applies the most trade defense measures to Vietnamese export goods.

To date, the US has investigated 64 cases out of a total of 253 foreign investigations into Vietnamese export goods (accounting for 25%), including: 28 anti-dumping cases, 11 anti-subsidy cases, 22 anti-trade defense tax evasion cases and 3 self-defense cases.

In defense cases, if a country that has not been recognized as a market economy has goods that are being sued, the US will use the costs of a third country (surrogate country) to calculate the dumping and subsidy margins in anti-dumping and subsidy cases, causing the dumping/subsidy tax rate to increase. This does not accurately reflect the costs and production and business situation of the exporting enterprise.

In fact, the US Department of Commerce has applied this method since the first case with Vietnamese pangasius in 2002, then maintained this precedent in all anti-dumping investigations of Vietnamese exports.