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should be extended by another 15 months, EU Trade Commissioner
Catherine Ashton will urge member states, a source said Thursday.
Anti-dumping duties on footwear, essentially fines for exporting
goods below production cost, were first applied in October 2006 and
have so far cost manufacturers with operations in those countries
hundreds of millions of euros. The news came on the day Chinese
Vice President Xi Jinping held talks with commission chief Jose
Manuel Barroso, at which the issue was to take prominence alongside
funding the international effort to combat global warming.
EU-China trade has exploded in recent years, making the EU the top
destination worldwide for exports of Chinese goods while China is
Europe's biggest trade partner after the United States. The EU
anti-dumping measures involve import duties of 16.5 per cent on
Chinese shoes with leather uppers and 10 per cent on the same kind
of shoes from Vietnam. Other Chinese export sectors, including
steel cables, industrial chemicals and metal fasteners, have been
similarly targeted. The European Footwear Alliance, which includes
global giants Adidas and Timberland among some 2,000 footwear
members, says companies have shelled out more than 800 million euros
(1.2 billion dollars) in these taxes. The measures have been a
source of conflict between member states. The main vote faultline has
run between Europe's economically liberal north, hostile in principle
to anti-dumping measures, and the more protectionist south,
sympathetic to the views of EU producers. Brussels decided a year
ago to maintain the anti-dumping measures on Chinese shoes to give
it time to re-evaluate the market situation.
