Vietnam’s leather and footwear industry, which employs more than 500,000 workers, may face huge damage in the confrontation of the EU anti-dumping charges because shoe export value to the EU accounts for over 65 per cent of the industry’s total export revenues, according to the Vietnam Leather and Footwear Association (Lefaso).
Footwear product is one of the highest value groups of exports from Vietnam to the EU countries with total earnings of more than US$2 billion per year. About 80 per cent of the total workforce in the industry is female. If the industry were imposed with an anti-dumping duty from the EU, it would cause many social problems and have bad impacts on Vietnam’s economy in general, the association said.
Nguyen Ngoc Lam, vice chairman of Lefaso, said Vietnamese shoe workers are facing the risk of income reduction and possible unemployment, whilst they are not the ones at fault. The most severe consequence is that foreign firms are considering shifting their factories from Vietnam to other countries because the Vietnamese footwear industry may be imposed an anti-dumping tax.
Lefaso also proposes that the EC should reconsider its decision on eight enterprises that were under investigation and consider the suspension of the investigation.
It said the main element which decides the anti-dumping, if any, in reality lays in foreign companies operating outside the Vietnamese territory, because the majority of Vietnamese shoe enterprises are fulfilling processing contracts ordered by foreign firms.
Only 20 per cent of Vietnamese firms exporting directly to the EU are small enterprises with old-fashioned production techniques and technology, low productivity, and weak competitiveness. They are not able to injure or threaten injury towards the EU’s leather and footwear industry.
The foreign-invested firms and joint venture companies represent the majority of Vietnam’s leather and footwear industry. And imported materials now accounts for 20 per cent of the total production cost of the industry.
Lefaso said the claim by the European Confederation of Footwear Industry seems to be based mainly on a purely statistical analysis to conclude that Vietnamese footwear with uppers made of leather has been dumped on EU at 130 per cent. The EC’s conclusion that eight firms, which were under investigation, do not meet the market economy criteria is very unreasonable.
The Vietnamese shoe firms are not decision makers of production price as well as export price, and Vietnam is not rich enough to subsidize local exporters. Thus, it would be unfair to accuse them of making a dumping sale on the EU market, the association added.
Vietnam and the EU signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the prevention of fraud in trade of footwear products in 1999 and Market Access Agreement in 2004. The EU also supports Vietnam to join the WTO.
However, in July this year the EC decided to take an anti-dumping investigation against 33 categories of footwear products with uppers of leather produced by 60 Vietnamese firms and chose Brazil as an analogue country for comparison when considering the investigation findings.
In October the EC completed the investigation in eight Vietnamese shoemakers under different economic sectors. On November 23 of this year it declared that these firms are not recognized as operating upon market economy status.
Vietnam is estimated to earn US$2.2 billion from exporting leather and footwear products to the EU next year, up only 9 per cent from this year. The export turnover this year is to rise slightly against last year to reach US$2 billion.
Lefaso’s Report
April 24–25, 2026
Kinh Bac Cultural Center, Bac Ninh Province
Vietnamese
