Since the outbreak of the European debt crisis, the EU’s foreign trade strategy has taken on new characteristics, namely using trade policies to force emerging economies to open their markets more to protect European companies, targeting more mid- to high-end high-tech industries. For example, according to the European Commission’s newly released “modernization” proposal for trade protection tools, the Commission will have the power to initiate cases on its own without prior application from EU companies. On May 15, the European Commission announced its decision in principle to launch a “double-reverse” investigation into Chinese telecom products, which falls into this category. At the same time, the EU has not relaxed its focus on traditional industries.
According to statistics, a total of 487 recall notifications were issued by the EU RAPEX system from January to April, a decrease of 19.23% compared with the same period last year. During the same period, 289 notifications were issued to China (excluding Taiwan and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the same below), a decrease of 21.25% compared with the same period last year.
Since the beginning of this year, although the number of notifications of all global and Chinese products in this system has declined, the number of notifications of Chinese textile and apparel products has increased slightly. From January to April, the EU RAPEX system issued 80 recall notices for Chinese textile and apparel products, an increase of 1.27% over the same period last year. Moreover, the proportion of textiles and clothing in all products notified to China reached a new high in the past six years, with textile and clothing products accounting for 27.68% from January to April.
The country that issued the notification: Greece came from behind
Among the countries that have issued notifications, Spain has been the country that has issued the most notifications under the EU RAPEX system for many years, with a total of 48 notifications issued from January to April. Since the beginning of this year, Greece seems to be catching up, with 47 notifications and tied for second place with Hungary. The number of notifications issued by the top ten countries accounted for 77.82% of the total number of notifications.
Among the countries that have issued notifications to China, Hungary ranks first, issuing a total of 34 notifications from January to April, and Spain ranks second with 32 notifications. The number of notifications issued by the top ten countries accounted for 77.16% of the total number of notifications.
Among the countries that have issued notifications on Chinese textile and clothing products, Greece surpassed Spain and Hungary, the previous major notification countries, to rank first from January to April, issuing a total of 20 notifications. Hungary and Bulgaria ranked second and third with 18 and 17 cases respectively. The number of notifications issued by the top ten countries accounted for 96.25% of all notifications.
Notified countries: China ranks first
From January to April, China ranked first among the notified countries with 289 notifications, more than ten times more than Turkey, which ranked second, and this trend has continued for many years.
Since this year, the notified countries have shown some new characteristics:
First, the number of joint notifications of the same product by multiple countries has increased. For example, Greece issued a notification targeting motor vehicles, and the notified countries were the United Kingdom, Japan, Turkey and France. During the same period, Portugal issued a notification also about motor vehicles. The notified countries were Japan, the United Kingdom and Spain.
Second, since the beginning of this year, the number of notifications in my country’s Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Taiwan has increased significantly compared with previous years, which requires the attention of relevant departments. From January to April, the number of notifications in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was 4, and the number in Taiwan was 6. However, in the whole of 2012, the number of notifications in these two regions was only 3.
Notified products: textiles and clothing are the most common
As in previous years, this year, textile and clothing products are still the products with the most notifications issued by the RAPEX system, followed by toys, which ranks second. The number of notifications for these two types of products accounts for 50% of the total number of notifications. above. From January to April, a total of 138 cases were reported to textile and apparel products worldwide, accounting for 28.34% of the total number of notified products. Among them, 80 were issued to China, accounting for 57.97% of the total notifications to global textile and apparel products.
In recent years, due to the continued downturn in the global economic environment, trade protectionism has increased. As China grows into a world trading power, it has become one of the countries most severely affected by trade remedy measures. In fact, a trade war can only lead to losses for both sides.
In the past two years, although the number of notifications of textile and clothing products exported to my country by the EU RAPEX system has declined, it can be seen from the fact that the proportion of textiles and clothing in all products notified to China has reached a new high in the past six years. Attention to China’s textiles and clothing has not decreased but has increased. This trend should attract the attention and attention of the majority of domestic export companies.
