EU Forced To Remove Chinese TV Tariffs

by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com, Hong Kong

09 September 2002

More than ten years after imposing 44.6% 'anti-dumping' (ie protectionist) tariffs against Chinese-made television sets, which effectively excluded them from the market in Europe, the EU has been forced to climb down and remove the tariffs.

China has seven world-scale television set makers and the country's entry to the WTO encouraged them to hire Brussels lawyers to challenge the tariffs. However, they have had to agree to undisclosed export curbs on volumes and prices..

The Chinese TV manufacturing sector has been suffering from over-capacity, although this year has already seen a 40% increase in exports to 8 million sets, with domestic demand more or less level at 25 million sets.

"We will try to greatly increase exports to the EU, to which our exports are almost zero now due to the high tariffs," said a spokesman for Konka, one of the largest firms.

The tariff structure was a classic case of protectionism driven by the EU producer lobby, which was and is suffering from high labour costs. However, many EU TV manufacturers now want to shift production to lower-cost centres such as China, and would face similar tariffs to those imposed on the Chinese manufacturers.

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