As a functional department in charge of export trade, Yue Yang, director of the Trade Remedy Division of the Fair Trade Bureau of the Guangdong Provincial Department of Commerce, recently delivered a speech titled "Analysis of the International Competitiveness of Chinese Enterprises and Trade Barriers and Risk Prevention Faced by Going Global" at the 2016 China LED Industry International Competitiveness Development Conference and the Second China LED Enterprise International Competitiveness Top 10 Award Ceremony, focusing on enterprises. Analyze and discuss related trade frictions and trade barriers encountered in the process of "going out" of the industry or in the process of product export, and bring out the latest information on export policies and response to trade barriers and risks.
According to reports, his department is mainly responsible for fair trade work, including anti-dumping, countervailing, safeguard measures and industrial damage investigations and other related work involving fair trade in import and export; comprehensively coordinating relevant World Trade Organization work; guiding and coordinating anti-dumping, countervailing, safeguard measures and other trade for goods exported to China. Responsible for responding to relief investigations and related work, guiding responses to foreign technical trade barriers; participating in the implementation of trade remedy measures; establishing an early warning mechanism for fair trade and industrial damage to maintain industrial safety; undertaking investigations into concentration of business operators and other anti-monopoly related work in accordance with the law; guiding provincial enterprises in responding to foreign anti-monopoly lawsuits, etc.
Yue Yang informed the meeting The situation of import and export fair trade work in Guangdong Province pointed out that trade friction is the new normal faced by foreign trade companies. China has been the country subject to the most anti-dumping and other trade remedy investigations for many years in a row. The economic and trade interest conflicts between Guangdong Province and international trading partners have also been further revealed.
He said that as a major foreign trade province, Guangdong Province has made brilliant achievements after more than 30 years of reform and opening up. Since 2014, Guangdong Province's foreign trade exports have exceeded the one trillion US dollar mark for the first time, reaching an important level. If viewed as a foreign trade economy alone, Guangdong Province ranks 11th in the world, which reflects the huge volume of Guangdong Province's foreign trade. At the same time, Guangdong Province is also a high-risk area for foreign trade frictions.
In the early days of China's accession to the WTO, a popular term called "anti-dumping" emerged. It is reported that anti-dumping is to target foreign goods in Measures taken to resist dumping in the domestic market. Generally, in addition to general import taxes, additional taxes are levied on dumped foreign goods to prevent them from being sold at a low price. This additional tax is called "anti-dumping tax." For example, Yueyang said that Guangdong Province is a major ceramic tile production area, and the value and quality of locally produced high-quality ceramic tiles are even comparable to Italian products. Among global trading partners, from South Korea, Thailand, Pakistan, India, the European Union, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, South Africa and other countries, almost every place in the world believes that the products produced in Guangdong, China are cheap and high-quality, but this has also led to the impact of imported products on its local products. Ultimately, this is the problem with dumping. He said, "The LED industry in Guangdong Province is developing very fast, with growth reaching two to three digits every year. In this case, whether we will conduct anti-dumping depends on the other party's industrial development, as well as the price competition of our own LED industry."
The so-called subsidy refers to the government of a country or any public Capital or financial preferential measures, including cash subsidies or other preferential policies, provided by public institutions to domestic producers or export operators, so that their products are in a more favorable competitive position in the international market than similar products that do not receive subsidies. Yueyang said that many companies have enjoyed government subsidies, whether in production, employment, or export processes, they will encounter export subsidies or incentives. Every business has the opportunity to encounter various government supports. These are what the government should do and are the means used by every country in the world. So, why were there anti-subsidy measures in the first place? He also solved everyone’s doubts.
Countervailing means that a country's government or the international community takes necessary restrictive measures against subsidy behavior in order to protect the healthy development of its own economy, maintain the order of fair competition, or for the free development of international trade. Includes temporary measures and commitment to levy countervailing duties. He explained that this is because subsidy measures will be risky once they are linked to exports. in, Guangdong Province is a province with a high incidence of subsidy cases. In fact, one of the main reasons why the LED industry has developed rapidly in recent years is inseparable from the strong support and guidance of local governments to guide industrial development. Every local government has provided a large amount of funding and subsidies for corporate procurement. On the other hand, in order to attract the LED industry to set up in the local area, the government also provides a lot of preferential policies in terms of land use.
Safeguard measures mean that when undue foreseeable developments lead to an increase in the import quantity of a product, causing serious damage or the threat of serious damage to domestic industries that produce similar or directly competitive products, the importing member can impose restrictions on the import of the product on the basis of the principle of non-discrimination. This is an emergency measure allowed by the WTO. Its purpose is to provide members with a certain degree of flexibility in their international obligations so that they can be exempted from their obligations under relevant WTO agreements when special circumstances arise, so as to remedy the serious damage that has been caused or avoid the possible consequences of the threat of serious damage.
When a country faces a sharp increase in imported products, it can adopt certain tariffs to limit the amount of imports. This situation has been common in recent years, especially in the first ten years after China's accession to the WTO. According to him, “We have a clause specifically tailored for China, which allows other WTO members to provide specific safeguard measures to our products, but this clause has expired in 2012.”
"Technical trade barriers", also known as "technical trade measures" or "technical barriers", appear in the form of national or regional technical regulations, agreements, standards and certification systems (conformity assessment procedures). They involve a wide range of content, covering science and technology, health, quarantine, safety, environmental protection, product quality and certification and many other technical indicator systems. When used in international trade, they present flexible and diverse regulations. Since a large number of such barriers appear in technical form, they are often covered with The cloak of legality has become the most hidden and difficult non-tariff barrier in current international trade.
When talking about the fact that people in this industry are more concerned about "technical trade barriers", Yue Yang first cited national statistics to explain. According to statistics, the impact of Guangdong's technical trade measures and technical trade barriers in 2014 reached 140 billion yuan, and its total amount was larger than trade friction. However, he believes that there is room for further exploration of this data. "In the process of exporting our LED industry, one of the more important issues we encounter is safety, energy consumption, and green environmental protection. According to the statistical results of the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Quality Supervision, we can know that products exported from my country are frequently recalled, returned, and detained due to energy consumption, quality and safety, etc. Not new. In addition to developed countries in Europe and the United States, including countries along the Belt and Road Initiative, as well as enterprises in some countries in Africa and Southeast Asia, their energy consumption requirements are not low and are not at all behind those of the United States and the European Union. This is very worthy of our attention."
In addition to anti-dumping and countervailing measures that comprehensively suppress the comparative advantages of industries, as well as various technical trade barriers and health and quarantine measures that comprehensively block the survival space of export industries, including Section 337 investigations and intellectual property frictions, they also focus on inhibiting the development of high-tech and emerging industries. It is understood that since 2008, Chinese LED companies have been subject to US "337" investigations many times. On the whole, the companies under investigation are mostly in the Pearl River Delta LED industry developed area, and most of them are small and medium-sized enterprises. Chinese LED companies have not performed well in dealing with such incidents that affect the entire industry. Many companies have chosen an evasive and indifferent attitude, while some have chosen a responsible attitude of actively responding to complaints.
In this regard, Yue Yang said that when it comes to intellectual property issues, the US Section 337 investigation has always attracted more attention. Over the years, the United States has initiated 337 investigations into the LED industry, one involving patents , one involves trade secrets, and the other involves intellectual property rights. He believes that with the R&D and innovation of technology, especially after China actively advocates reform, upgrading and technological innovation, there are likely to be some new issues and new troubles related to intellectual property rights, which require enterprises to be on guard and actively respond early.
At the same time, Yue Yang also pointed out the direction for Guangdong Province's response to trade frictions in his speech. He emphasized that in the future, we must pay attention to and strengthen the construction of Guangdong Province's work system to deal with trade frictions, accelerate the establishment of our province's industrial damage early warning and monitoring system, strengthen the construction of intermediary organizations and carriers to respond to trade frictions, vigorously cultivate grassroots organizations in the fair trade industry, form a positive interactive relationship among government functional departments, intermediary organizations and enterprises, and form a joint force to deal with trade frictions.
To this end, he focused on the form of trade friction in Guangdong. He said that Guangdong Province itself is a trade It is not surprising that, as a large province, the proportion of trade frictions and the number of safety issues rank among the highest in the country. Because when an industry develops faster and the growth rate is higher, it will inevitably attract more attention. According to relevant statistics, the current situation facing trade barriers is relatively severe, and cases are growing rapidly. In 2015, there was an increase of 1.26 times compared with 2014. At the same time, anti-dumping accounted for a large proportion. There were a total of four Section 337 investigations in 2015. The proportion of new cases and review cases every year is about the same, an increase of 3.9 times compared with 2014.
The second characteristic is that the cases have rapidly moved from the original focus on large countries such as the United States and the European Union to developing countries. Especially in recent years, trade frictions in the South American market have grown rapidly. In addition, cases in emerging markets such as South Africa and Russia are also rising rapidly.
The third feature is that in terms of the types of current cases, intellectual property rights, mainly countervailing, have become The hot spots and focus of trade frictions. Among them, countervailing and Section 337 investigations, especially in light of the current industrial development characteristics of Guangdong Province, namely transformation and upgrading, have become the focus and focus of current trade frictions.
The fourth feature is that the labor-intensive manufacturing industry with traditional advantages in Guangdong Province is still the focus. This is a question worth pondering. For example, the photovoltaic industry, which is mainly supported by EU imports, is developing particularly fast. The other is steel. He predicts that these two products will soon become the focus of trade frictions and the focus of international attention. Therefore, as the LED industry has developed to this day, it is also necessary to avoid these frictions and risks.
Regarding the practical issue of how companies should deal with frictions, Yue Yang pointed out that in the face of trade frictions and trade risks, we must first establish awareness. Companies all want to sell their products to every part of the world, and we all know that many problems will occur during the export process. We We must have confidence in this, and we must regard the response to intellectual property frictions as an issue of high concern in the development process of enterprises.
For example, when the country responds to technical trade barriers and measures, every company needs to actively provide information and data. In the process of multilateral industrial cooperation consultations, the country also needs companies to provide information on the problems they encounter during the export process. Each company needs to bring forward its own problems and undisclosed practices of other countries, and safeguard its own rights and interests through these rules.
"If an enterprise encounters such or other problems in the process of exporting in the future, you are welcome to come to us. We will sit there and wait for your consultation, or we are also willing to go to your place to help you solve problems." He said that Guangdong enterprises have a characteristic. They always solve difficulties by themselves. If they cannot solve it, they just avoid it, and rarely seek help from the government. He hopes that through this introduction, LE in Guangdong can D. When an enterprise encounters risks or frictions during the export process, it knows which department to approach for help.
Anna
Anna