The US Department of Agriculture's plant health service, APHIS, published a pest risk analysis on October 19 for fresh passion fruit from Vietnam, the step that precedes market access, and found that one or more designated phytosanitary measures would be sufficient to mitigate the pest risk. Comments on docket APHIS-2026-0364 close December 18. If its conclusions stand after the comments, APHIS says it will announce a decision and authorize imports under the conditions in its risk management document, which the notice does not summarize. The two governments agreed on the technical requirements in August 2024; passion fruit would join dragon fruit, rambutan, lychee, longan, star apple, mango, pomelo, and coconut, which Vietnam already ships to the US.

Meanwhile, the EU is moving in the opposite direction. Commission Regulation (EU) 2026/2299, published October 16, cuts the maximum residue level for the fungicide difenoconazole to 0.05 mg/kg for passion fruit, 0.15 mg/kg for peppercorns, and the lowest level laboratories can reliably measure, 0.01 mg/kg, for durian, pineapple, and litchi. It applies to goods placed on the EU market from May 5, 2027, so passion fruit, durian, and pepper from the 2026-27 harvest placed on the EU market after that date, stored pepper included, must meet the new limits.

Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade extended its antidumping duties on polyester filament yarn, a basic textile input, from China, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia until October 2031, at rates from 3.36 percent to 54.90 percent, under Decision 2652/QĐ-BCT. The ministry says the duties have kept domestic yarn makers running and supplying downstream weaving and dyeing, and that ending them would likely let injurious dumping continue or recur. Importers of yarn from the four countries pay them, which keeps input costs up for Vietnamese weavers and garment makers that source yarn there.

The European Commission opened an antidumping investigation on March 12 into refined copper tubes in level-wound coils, smooth or internally grooved, from China, Mexico, Vietnam, and Uzbekistan, after a complaint from the EU Copper Tubes Defence Committee. Manufacturers feed the tubing into heat exchangers for air conditioning and refrigeration. Vietnam is the biggest of the four suppliers. The EU imported €151 million of refined copper tube in coils from Vietnam in 2025, by Eurostat's count, up about half from 2024 and more than from China (€88 million) or Mexico (€85 million), though that customs line is somewhat broader than the product under investigation. Provisional duties can come no later than eight months after initiation, which falls on November 12, and the investigation must close within 14 months, by May 2027.

Vietnamese firms face proposed duties of 12.3 to 14.4 percent, not yet in force

Vietnam's Trade Office in Belgium and the EU, relayed by Báo Đầu tư on October 16, said the Commission has proposed provisional rates for Vietnamese companies set at the lower of each firm's dumping margin and its injury margin. The report adds that the rates are not yet in force. The dumping margin measures how far a firm's export price sits below its normal value; the injury margin is the duty needed to remove the harm to EU producers. EU law normally charges the lower of the two, a practice known as the lesser-duty rule. Thuế & Hải quan, the tax and customs section of the Finance Ministry's economics journal, gave the detail the same day: 12.3 and 13.9 percent for the two sampled exporters, Hailiang Copper Manufacturing and Jintian Copper Industrial, 13.3 percent for other cooperating Vietnamese firms, and 14.4 percent for the rest. The complaint had alleged dumping margins of 5 to 35 percent and injury levels of 8 to 20 percent across the four countries, according to the Commission's registration regulation. The notice of initiation also records the complaint's allegation of a raw-material distortion: copper metal, about three-quarters of the tube's production cost, faces export tariffs in China and Vietnam. If the Commission confirms the distortion and can clearly conclude that a higher duty is in the EU's interest, the law lets it set aside the lesser-duty rule and charge up to the full dumping margin. The Commission's summary of the proposed duties, dated October 14, shows it has not used that option for Vietnamese firms at this stage: Hailiang's dumping margin is 20.6 percent, but its proposed duty is its 12.3 percent injury margin.

Registration puts goods already shipped at risk

The Commission made these imports subject to registration from May 27 for nine months. Registration allows a definitive duty to be charged on goods that entered the EU up to 90 days before provisional measures, but only if the conditions in Article 10(4) of the EU's basic antidumping regulation are met, including a history of dumping or importers' awareness of it, and a further substantial rise in imports likely to seriously undermine the duty's effect. The Commission says it will assess those conditions only when it sets definitive duties.

If provisional duties arrive on November 12, the 90-day window reaches back to mid-August, so the exposure sits on tube that has already cleared EU customs. Importers and Vietnamese suppliers that have not agreed who would carry a retroactive charge have until definitive duties, due by May 2027, to settle it. Taken together, Vietnam, the largest of the four suppliers under investigation, faces EU duties of roughly 12 to 14 percent on copper tube by November 12 if Brussels confirms its proposal, and registration means the bill could also reach tube already sold. On a trade worth €151 million last year, that cost belongs in contract terms now.