Italy Restarts Anti Dumping On Asian Shoe Upper Leather

All along, the Italy Footwear Manufacturers Association (ANCI) is the main advocate of the EU anti-dumping measures. Anti-dumping measures impose a 16.5% tariff on imports of Chinese shoes and leather products to the EU, and impose a 10% tariff on imported leather shoes from Vietnam.

In order to prove to European Union politicians that China and Vietnam's footwear brands have unfair support advantages, the association has done a lot of research work so that they can produce and sell footwear products at the price in the export market.

The two Asian countries have rejected any anti competitive practices and lobbied vigorously to eliminate them. They are still effective in the existing models of the two countries until the end of March 2011.

At the beginning of this year, VitoArtioli, chairman of the Italy Footwear Manufacturers Association (ANCI), pointed out that the organization is still concerned about the "unfair competition" that Italy footwear brands have been facing.

He explained: "this is the principle of the European Commission to assess whether unfair competition exists with the necessary objective principles. We believe (it does exist). There is no doubt that the anti-dumping duty on imports from China, Vietnam and Macao (China) will continue to be applied because the anti-dumping duty will expire at the end of March.

At the same time, it is an advantage for our footwear industry to re enforce the principle of consumer pparency through the ratification of the mandatory origin labelling rules for products imported into the European Union.