Deputy Chairman of the HCM City Knitting, Embroidery, Textile and Garment Association (AGTEK) has announced that the US would hold the first official hearing related to the apparel imports monitoring scheme applied to Vietnam’s products on April 22.

At the hearing, the US DOC will see the involved parties present their viewpoints about the possibility of imposing the apparel imports monitoring scheme, which has been designed to be conducted every six months. Vinatas’ representative will have five minutes to express its viewpoint.

Representatives from the Vietnamese Ministry of Trade, Vinatas, HCM City Knitting, Embroidery, Textile and Garment Association will participate in the hearing. On the US side, there will be representatives of textile and apparel associations, importers and involved businesses.

DOC has finished two rounds of collecting opinions from involved parties through mail and fax messages to prepare for the public hearing.

Answering Vnexpress, Mr Kiet said that Vinatas would hold a meeting next week to discuss the necessary issues  to be presented within the five minutes. “The hearing experience gained from the anti-dumping lawsuits raised by the EU against Vietnam-sourced leather capped shoes last year shows that the representative should only present main points briefly and succinctly in order to reserve time for questions”, said Mr Kiet. Vietnam will have less time at the hearing before DOC, which is just ¼ of the time allowed by the EU.

According to Mr Kiet, Vinatas does not have a plan to lobby the US side to not impose the apparel imports monitoring scheme on Vietnam-sourced apparel products.
Last year, Vietnam became the 150th member of the WTO, which meant that the US would have to remove the quota scheme imposed on apparel imports from Vietnam. For the fear of competition from Vietnam- sourced apparel products, many American congressmen protested against the granting of PNTR (permanent normal trade relations).

In order to remove the barriers installed by US congressmen, the US DOC suggested the implementation of the apparel import monitoring scheme every 6 month in return for the granting of PNTR to Vietnam as schedule. However,the observers worry that the monitoring scheme would automatically kick-start anti-dumping lawsuits against products sourced from Vietnam if the US side discovered that Vietnamese garment companies were receiving subsidies from the Government or dumping their products in the US.