China’s Asean trade faces more barriers amid fears of overcapacity, imbalance

Beijing’s strategy to reshape China’s trade profile to boost exports to Southeast Asia has been put to the test by a growing array of barriers in the region that are responding to supply chain shifts, analysts said, with the curbs also coming at a time of weakening shipments to the 10-nation bloc.

China is facing a surge of trade restrictions amid concerns of industrial overcapacity – as it produces more of certain good than it is able to sell or use – and Vietnam became one of the latest countries to officially launch an anti-dumping investigation into certain types of hot rolled coil steel from China and India late last month.

India started investigating cheap steel imports from China and Vietnam a day after the Vietnamese announcement, according to Reuters, but it has yet to officially confirm the investigation.

A total of 96 trade barrier investigations targeted at China were announced by its trade partners from January to July, already exceeding the 63 in the whole of last year.

At least 74 were related to anti-dumping – exports of a product at a price lower than the price normally charged in its own market – with two ongoing cases from Vietnam focused on steel and one from Thailand on aluminium, according to China Trade Remedies Information, a platform under the Ministry of Commerce.

The United States, India and the European Union levied the most numbers of complaints among China’s trade partners.

Asean countries have reported that their growing trade deficit – as they import more goods and services than they export – with China widened from US$44.8 billion in 2013 to US$137.3 billion in 2022.

And more trade barriers from the Asean bloc of countries appear to be on the way.

Malaysia’s trade ministry announced this week