A majority of European Union (EU) countries support a termination of anti-dumping taxes on leather shoes from Vietnam and China.
Reuters quoted an EU diplomat as saying that Britain, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands and Sweden want the duties scrapped immediately before the lucrative Christmas retail period.
The European Commission is expected to decide in September whether to propose extending dumping duties on imports of leather shoes from Vietnam and China, he said.
The shoe duties were introduced in 2006 and expired last year. However, after that, the EC decided to extend duties of up to 16.5 percent on Chinese leather shoes and 10 percent on those made in Vietnam, the diplomat said.
The EU is a traditional market which occupies the largest proportion of Vietnam ’s shoes exports. However, the country’s exports of this product have remarkably decreased over the past two years due to dumping duties./.