Anti-dumping "a necessary act"
03/10/2008
News of the confirmation that the European Commission will keep anti-dumping measures on imports of leather shoes from Vietnam and China has once again caught the attention of the Financial Times.
In a news piece published on October 3, the newspaper, once again, quoted BEUC, an umbrella group for consumer associations across Europe, which repeated its message that making it more difficult to give European consumers access to cheap imported shoes was unfair.
It also quoted sources close to the outgoing European trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, as saying that he had only pushed for a review, which keeps the measures in place in the meantime, because he had no choice, with the clear suggestion that he would have preferred to remove the duties. It also said the commission would seek to carry out its review and, perhaps, remove the tariffs as quickly as possible.
There was nothing in the report to offer the argument in favour of anti-dumping measures, which many higher-end European footwear manufacturers want to keep and which many in the footwear industry believe are fair.
The Financial Times called leatherbiz.com on October 2 to ask for the contact details of the Italian National Association of Footwear Manufacturers (ANCI). ANCI said on October 3 that it had tried three times to return the FT reporter's calls but had not been able to get through.
Later in the day, the association issued a statement taking Mr Mandelson to task for suggesting that the interim retention of the measures may be short-lived. Its president, Vito Artioli, said: "This new investigation automatically brings with it an extension until the end of 2009 of the duties currently in force for imports from these two Asian countries. The Commission was forced to acknowledge our case, given that China and Vietnam are still today embracing trade policies that obviously cause great harm to the European footwear industry."
He said anti-dumping was not a measure that aimed to limit trading, but "a necessary act against those countries that adopt unfair initiatives, marketing products below cost to undermine their competitors".
He added that his association had used official European trade statistics to show that, in the last 18 months, imports of leather footwear from China and Vietnam had dropped by 40 million pairs. His argument is that if those shoes had previously been on offer to European consumers at a falsely cheap price, the commission has done the right thing in trying to improve the situation.
And if this helps manufacturers of beautiful, fashionable, high-quality leather shoes in countries such as Italy, Spain and Portugal to stay in business, Mr Artioli is of the opinion that this will be of benefit to consumers, who ought to look for more when buying footwear than the cheapest price. It is also in the interests of European tanneries for footwear manufacturing there to survive.
Ironically, on October 3, Peter Mandelson resigned as European trade commissioner to return to a position in the UK government. His replacement in Brussels will be Baroness Catherine Ashton, until now the most senior government representative in the House of Lords, the UK's second tier of parliament.
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