The United States issued the first sky high ticket to our Vic export enterprises

North China Pharmaceutical Group, China's leading API company, paid up to $160 million in damages Wednesday, a federal court in Brooklyn ruled Thursday, citing two U.S companies suing China's VC exporters for jointly raising prices This is the first time that Chinese pharmaceutical companies have been punished in the US anti-monopoly litigation In order to prevent stock price fluctuation, North China Pharmaceutical Group suspended trading on the afternoon of the 16th, and announced that the company had not received the official judgment document from the US Court on the evening of the same day After receiving the official judgment document, the company will start the appeal procedure, and timely perform the obligation of information disclosure as required Huabei Pharmaceutical Group, which has a history of 50 years, is the leading enterprise of China's APIs, one of the four largest manufacturers of vitamins and antibiotics in China, and has created a history of large-scale production of antibiotics in China According to reports, the reason why Huabei pharmaceutical faces the punishment is that two American companies located in Texas and New Jersey sued China's Vic exporters for collusion in raising prices for many years, making the US Vic price rise from $2.50 a kilogram to $15 a kilogram Due to the out of court settlement between two other Chinese pharmaceutical companies, only Huabei Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd may face high price punishment The compensation of US $160 million is eight times the net profit of the Chinese enterprise in 2011 How can Huabei pharmaceutical group bear it? Wang Feng, a researcher at the Hebei Academy of Social Sciences, said that before that, some vitamin enterprises in Europe and Japan had reached price alliances, and the price of vitamin C was relatively high, so they were also punished by the US court at that time, not only for a lot of money, but also for criminal responsibility According to China's Ministry of Commerce, China is a major producer and exporter of Vic This case has a long history As early as 2005, Texas livestock feed company "animal science products company" and New Jersey "Lanis company" filed a lawsuit to the court, accusing Chinese companies of conspiring to manipulate the price of Vic, which forced downstream companies to pay high prices The plaintiff claims that several Chinese VC manufacturers have formed a price monopoly group On November 5, 2012, the Federal District Court of Brooklyn, New York, United States held a trial on the case of monopoly of VC market by a number of Chinese pharmaceutical enterprises Zhang Baorui, President of Hebei Pharmaceutical Industry Association, said that Hebei is a major manufacturing province of vitamin C in China However, in recent years, due to overcapacity and oversupply, the price of vitamin C APIs has continued to fall In order to survive, domestic enterprises have very fierce competition with each other, and it is impossible to form a price alliance to manipulate prices Industry insiders believe that only when a few large enterprises account for more than half of the world's output can they have the ability to control and influence global prices However, the premise is that these enterprises should work together to control global prices by forming price alliances or by controlling production In fact, there is far from such close relationship between Chinese enterprises They often fight on their own, and the linkage between enterprises is relatively low The senior management of Huabei Pharmaceutical Group said that they should actively and seriously deal with it and are ready to appeal If they do not appeal, they will accept the ticket with high price and give up their market share Experts pointed out that there are many options for antitrust litigation in the United States The court's direct judgment is a situation It can also choose to settle with the Ministry of justice, the corresponding antitrust agencies in the United States, or with the corresponding enterprises Judging from the current judgment, the possibility of completely escaping responsibility is relatively small The best way is to choose the corresponding institution for reconciliation, and the amount of compensation will be less Xie Yongfa, director of the policy and regulation department of Hebei Provincial Department of Commerce, said that international trade frictions have been normalized In recent years, the United States has launched anti-dumping against Chinese products for many times, and trade protectionism has increased significantly It is hoped that China and the United States will jointly safeguard a free, open and fair international trade environment and properly handle trade frictions in a more rational way At the same time, this case also gives Chinese enterprises a lesson in going global, and try not to touch the anti-monopoly law, which is fatal for many enterprises.