The steel industry should diversify its export markets and products to reduce dependence on a single market and minimise the risks of high import tariffs as trade defence investigations targeting the industry increase, experts have said.

According to the Viet Nam Steel Association, the steel industry faced 62 trade defence lawsuits from 2004 to 2020, more than half of which were anti-dumping cases.

Recently, five countries launched anti-dumping investigations into several steel products from Viet Nam.

Le Trieu Dung, Director of the Trade Remedies Authority of Viet Nam under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, said the number of trade defence investigation cases on Viet Nam’s export products had increased in recent years.

So far, Vietnamese export products have faced 203 cases of trade defence investigations, nearly 40 per cent of them related to steel products.