‘Police come once a year with a TV crew. They film the seizure of a shop, and then it’s business as usual,’ a Ninh Hiep bazaar seller says
“Police come once a year with a TV crew. They film the seizure of a shop, and then it’s business as usual,” said a seller at her stall displaying fake Ralph Lauren polos at Hanoi’s Ninh Hiep wholesale market.
Ninh Hiep is among about 30 “notorious markets” worldwide identified by the US Trade Representative (USTR) in its latest annual report on counterfeiting and piracy. The USTR also flagged streaming websites, such as MyFlixerz, which it said are believed to operate from Vietnam and draw hundreds of millions of monthly visitors worldwide by offering pirated films and TV series. Despite an announced crackdown, they remained accessible as of Wednesday.
The USTR and Vietnam’s foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment. Washington regards intellectual property violations in Vietnam as serious and harmful to the US economy. On April 30, it designated the Southeast Asian nation as the world’s worst offender on IP rights and warned it could launch an investigation by the end of this month, potentially leading to trade tariffs.
That coincided with a surge in Vietnam’s exports to the United States, which in the first three months of this year led to a US trade deficit with Hanoi of US$54.8 billion, higher than those with major exporters China and Mexico, US data shows. The Trump administration has repeatedly said it wants to reduce trade deficits.
After the April designation as a “priority foreign country” for IP rights – the only country in 13 years to be added to the worst category in the US ranking – the foreign ministry said Vietnam made “strenuous efforts” to protect intellectual property and urged the US to provide “an objective and balanced assessment of Vietnam’s efforts and achievements”.
Source: News - South China Morning Post
