The Impacts Of The European Union’s TBTs To Vietnam’s Leather And Footwear Export

Vietnam’s rapid increasing leather and footwear export trade has made a significant contribution to the country’s economic development over recent years. It has been more than five year for Vietnam’s entry into WTO. With the decrease of regulations of tariff barrier and non-tariff barrier, the export market of Vietnamese footwear products has been expanded and the market share has been increased, which arouses great attention of many countries in the world, especially the European countries. So this makes some countries more and more increasing the limits of import, which are constraints that hinder the Vietnamese manufacturing firms to meet the requirements of the global buyer and to market their products successfully on export markets. So what should be noticed is the more covert and more agile trade barrier, which becomes the biggest export barrier of our country’s footwear and leather products.Currently, leather and footwear products are one of Vietnam’s four major export items in terms of value. Vietnam’s leather and footwear is exported to nearly fifty nations, and is the fourth largest exporter in the world. Major products are sport, leather and canvas shoes and sandals of a full range. EU has been the largest leather and footwear market for Vietnam for many years, accounting for revenue of US$3.1billion and48%of total leather and footwear export earnings of Vietnam in2011.The aim of this paper is to review the concept and the related content of technical barriers to trade, conclude the situation of EU technical barriers to trade in the Vietnamese footwear and leather product field, analyze the provisions of the EU’s leather and footwear imports, the impacts and challenges from technical barriers to trade and finally discuss to give recommendations for Vietnam’s footwear sector to overcome the technical barriers of the EU. The time-series monthly date from2002to2012was used in this paper for the empirical purpose. In addition, by using the case studies through investigation in the internet in the theoretical framework of Tesfom (2003) to identify their impact of barriers on the Vietnamese footwear export of the local manufacturers.This research is divided into four chapters. Chapter one provides a brief introduction about the background of the trade relations between the EU and Vietnam’s leather and footwear and then followed by the research on the export barriers. And then chapter two analyses Vietnam’s leather and footwear export to the EU market in the period from2002to2012. Chapter three analyses the impacts of technical barriers to trade to Vietnam’s leather and footwear export. Finally, chapter four draws the recommendations to Vietnam’s leather and footwear industry to overcome the limits of EU import.For this study, in Vietnam in particular as well as in the world in general is actually still somewhat new. In addition, there is a little scholar writing on TBTs in general aspects of footwear and leather export in the EU market. This paper seeks to fill such an important gap and is consequently laudable and appropriate. Firstly, this research add value to the present literature debate on TBTs and expand the scope of the debate to cover the question whether European Union’s TBTs have enough strict influences to the share of Vietnam footwear and leather export. Secondly, individual traders are set to benefit from this study because the information provided in this study will assist them to make informed decisions about trade restrictive measures that they may face in the course of trade in the EU market. Finally, the research will strive to provide clarity on the impacts of EU TBTs to Vietnam footwear and leather export since there are conflicting views from authors concerning this subject matter.However, although we tried to do best, this study still has the inherent limitation is that a research aimed at arriving at a more complete and updated analysis of TBTs and their impact on trade faces serious gaps. Current knowledge of such barriers, both empirical and conceptual, is rather limited and hampered by the lack of common methodologies and the inadequate quality of available data and updated information. Besides, time of this research is not enough so actually I did not meet the requirements of the content and form yet.After the research and analysis of actual data, the paper draws recommendations about the way of Vietnamese enterprises and government to meeting and overcoming the requirements and regulations of the EU technical barriers to trade. And by those changes, the economic efficiency of the production will accordingly increase; the capacity of enterprises producing export commodities which require high standards on TBTs will be improved, so that the Vietnamese firms can be easily accepted by the fastidious but potential-rich markets such as EU or any other countries.