Vietnam steel imports benefit from new EU regulations
Steel NewsDate: 11-07-2023 by: Ngoc Cam
The European Union (EU) has issued Regulation (EU) 2023/1301, amending Regulation (EU) 2019/159 on the application of safeguard measures to some imported steel products. The European Commission does not extend the safeguard duty for an additional year unless the EU’s steel producers can demonstrate injury from imported goods.
1. EU: extension of safeguard measures against imported steel in the form of TRQ
On June 2, 2023, the Committee on Safeguards of the World Trade Organization (WTO) announced that the European Union (EU) continued to extend its safeguard measure against imported steel under the form of tariff rate quota (TRQ) for some imported steel products for an additional year. The decision has been valid from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024.
The reason for the extension is that the domestic steel industry of Europe can suffer significantly from the dumping and export of cheap steel by foreigners. The EC continues to maintain its defense by allocating quotas that are mixed between the way of allocating separate quotas for each country and general quota allocations to the remaining countries. The out-of-quota tariff is 25%. The amount of non-taxable quotas continued to increase by 4% compared to the period from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2023.
Vietnam is subject to a standard quota on a quarterly basis for 8 product groups, including:
- Group 1: hot rolled steel plate
- Group 3B: electrical engineering steel plate
- Groups 4A, 4B: galvanized steel plate
- Group 5: organic coated steel sheet
- Group 9: stainless cold rolled steel plate
- Group 25B: large steel pipes
- Group 26: other steel pipes
For other groups of steel products, Vietnam is exempted from safeguard measures according to the criterion set for a developing country whose import turnover is less than 3%. In case the market share of importing another group of steel products from Vietnam into the EU exceeds 3%, this group will be included in the list of applying TRQ during the annual administrative reviews.
2. EU: amending the application of safeguard measures to some imported steels
After listening to the recommendations from the relevant countries during the period from 5/6/2023 to 13/6/2023 along with the assessment of whether to terminate the safeguard measure early before June 2023 based on the general import export data in 2022, the EU has issued a new revised regulation effective from 1/7/2023.
Under the revised rules, all tariff rate quotas (TRQs) of the safeguard measure will continue to increase by 4% from 1 July 2023. Any member of the WTO that is a developing country is exempted from safeguard duty in case that country's exports to the EU are less than 3% of its total imports for each product category. Vietnam is further applied to category 26 and removed category 3A compared to the old scope.
If the aggregate share of imports from developing countries (with individual shares below 3%) exceeds 9% in a specific category, they will be subject to the same measure in that product category.
According to the above Regulation, the countries benefiting from the quota expansion by country include Vietnam, Turkey, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Moldova, North Macedonia, Oman, and South Fly.
3. Vietnamese steel exports to the EU market
According to the latest report on Vietnam's steel market situation of the Vietnam Steel Association (VSA), the total production of the hot rolled coil in 2022 reached 6.04 million tons. Which, exports reached 1.3 million tons, up 0.9% over the same period in 2021.
Galvanized sheet production in 2022 reached 4.56 million tons, down 23.4% over the same period in 2021, of which exports reached 2.086 million tons, down 38.1% over the same period in 2021. Steel pipe is one of the leading export products. According to VSA's record, the production output in 2022 reached more than 2.065 million tons, of which the export volume reached 258,873 tons, up 9.1% over the same period in 2021.
With increasingly improved production capacity, and strong investment in technology lines, Vietnamese steel is capable of meeting international standards and customer requirements. The advantages of membership in the WTO and the signing of the EVFTA Agreements help Vietnam open up many opportunities to export steel to international markets in general and Europe in particular.
Amendments in Regulation (EU) 2019/159 of the European Union positively impact Vietnam's steel industry. As a result, customers can import cheap, high-quality steel and enjoy many tax incentives.
