The US Department of Commerce (DOC) announced the conclusion of the investigation on anti-circumvention of antidumping duty, countervailing duty against corrosion resistant steel (CORE) and cold rolled steel (CRS) imports from Vietnam.

On December 16, 2019, the US Department of Commerce (DOC)  officially announced the decision to impose the highest tax of 456% on some steel products manufactured in Korea or Taiwan, then sent to Vietnam for simple processing and then exported to the US.

In a statement issued by the US Department of Commerce, the agency discovered a number of anti-corrosive and cold-rolled steel products manufactured in Vietnam, using Korean or Taiwanese substrate steel, which had avoided the anti-dumping duty and countervailing duty of the US.

Earlier, in early July 2019, DOC issued preliminary conclusions in the anti-dumping and countervailing investigation for cold rolled steel and corrosion resistant steel used by Vietnam for hot rolled steel materials imported from Taiwan and Korea.

According to the DOC’s conclusion, the production of these two steels after being imported into Vietnam is negligible, helping to avoid anti-dumping and countervailing duty that the US is applying to South Korea and Taiwan’s products. Therefore, DOC will apply temporary anti-tax evasion measures for the two above-mentioned steel products imported from Vietnam through the collection of deposit upon import. In the case of cold rolled steel and corrosion-resistant steel produced from raw materials of Vietnam or other countries or territories will not be taxable in this case.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade has also warned enterprises to be investigated by importing countries’ investigating authorities, which may change regulations and impose stricter requirements in trade defense investigation cases. The business has an appropriate business strategy. Particularly switch to using domestic or other sources.

This is not the first time Vietnamese products have been infected from China. Since the end of 2017, the DOC also believes that corrosion-resistant carbon steel (commonly called galvanized steel) and cold-rolled steel imported from Vietnam have evaded anti-dumping duty (AD) and countervailing duty ( CVD) when manufactured from Chinese hot rolled steel. Therefore, these two products imported from Vietnam are subject to AD duty of 199.43% and CVD of 39.05% for galvanized steel and AD duty of 265.79% and CVD of 256.44 % that the US is applying to products of Chinese origin.