Monitoring of Vietnamese Apparel Imports Ends

Ever since Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization in early 2007, the Bush administration has been keeping a watchful eye on apparel imports from that country. That is about to end.

The Department of Commerce reviewed the most recent six months of data collected under a special monitoring program and said on Nov. 21 that it found no reason to initiate an antidumping investigation on apparel made in Vietnam. “This final investigation reveals that prices of Vietnamese apparel are in line with, and in most cases even exceed, other major suppliers, including Central America,” said David Spooner, assistant secretary of import administration.

This is the final review under the import-monitoring program, which was scheduled to end when President Bush leaves office.

When Vietnam joined the WTO in January 2007, some U.S. apparel and textile companies feared the Southeast Asian country would dump goods, selling them for less in the United States than they sell for in Vietnam. But that hasn’t been the case. Compared with other apparel-making regions such as Bangshy;ladesh, India, Pakistan and Central America, Vietnam’s goods were comparably priced.

Even though the apparel-monitoring program made some importers wary about doing business in that region, Vietnam has grown to become the No. 2 provider of clothing to the U.S. market, with $3.92 billion in apparel sent during the first nine months of this year. China is No. 1, with about $16.9 billion in apparel exports to the United States during the same period.

However, the Vietnam monitoring program could be resurrected under the incoming Obama administration if prices of Vietnamese-made clothing dropped drastically or if there were a flood of merchandise in the U.S. market.

“If you talk to the Bush administration officials, they said it is the end of Vietnamese monitoring as we know it,” said Julia Hughes, president of International Development Systems, a Washington, D.C., company that keeps track of apparel quotas. “But there is some anxiety that there is something that someone will try to do.”

The Commerce Department will continue to post import data on the Internet for various apparel categories from Vietnam until Jan. 20, 2009, when Barack Obama is inaugurated. —Deborah Belgum