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Vietnam ambassador pressures US to remove ‘non-market economy’ label

Vietnam’s ambassador to the US, Nguyen Quoc Dzung, has said that including Vientam among the 12 countries in the world the US considers be non-market economies is unacceptable, Reuters has reported. He goes on to say that “So I think if the DOC (Department of Commerce) turned down that, I think it would be very, very bad for the two countries.”

The US DOC announced in October that it would review Vietnam’s non-market economy status at the request of the Vietnamese government. The review, however, has been met with pushback in the US.

A handful of US senators, for example, sent a letter in December to the DOC arguing that the review process “defies both normal order and common sense”.

The American Shrimp Processors Association has also joined the fracas. The group currently has an antidumping claim against Vietnamese shrimp before the DOC and has made representations to the DOC in support of maintaining Vietnamese NME status.

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