Just how strong is Russia’s “no limits” relationship with China right now? That is the question posed by the Chinese furniture supply chain, furious that tariffs on Russian-bound sliding rail components—accounting for 30% of kitchen and office furniture manufacturing costs—have skyrocketed from 0 to 55.65% (more than five times higher than tariffs on European furniture parts) over the past few weeks alone.
The upshot is that it is now far more price-competitive for the Russian furniture supply chain to import finished furniture from China (subject to a 9-12% tariff) than manufacture furniture in Russia using predominantly Chinese parts. These hikes, which result in a US $19,969 to $24,962 increase in container cost, have already led Russian traders to cancel orders and send full containers of furniture back to China.
Wood Central understands that tariff-hungry city officials in Vladivostok—the Russian trading post responsible for processing 90% of all Chinese furniture traded into the country—are to blame for the hikes, re-categorising all sliding rail components arriving at ports as bearing types.
According to the Association of Furniture and Woodworking Enterprises of Russia, the industry’s peak body which last month lobbied the government to introduce a 60% tariff on “unfriendly” countries and a 10% tariff on “friendly” countries), the tariffs run the risk of bankrupting Russia’s multi-billion dollar import industry – which, in turn, will increase the cost of furniture by at least 15% across Russia.
Are there fractures in the special Sino-Russian relationship?
Incensed Chinese commentators have targeted Russia for the increase, claiming that the Russian government is targeting short-term tariff revenue at the expense of long-term Sino-Russian relationships:
“I’m angry! Chinese media criticise Donald Trump for his potential tariffs against China on a daily basis but say nothing about Russian tariffs,” a Guangdong-based columnist using the pseudonym “Du Juan” said in an article this week. “In this wave of unreasonable tariff hikes, Chinese furniture makers face rising challenges and market risks.”
A Tianjin-based writer named Bei Shuo said Russia’s tariff policy against China is more aggressive than Trump’s: “After the Russian-Ukrainian war broke out, most European companies left Russia, but Chinese suppliers quickly filled up the space to ensure a stable growth of Russia’s furniture sector,” he said.
“But why does Russia now turn its back on us?”
“In the commercial world, there are no permanent friends, only permanent interests. Russia wants to develop its manufacturing sector and knows it can’t rely on China forever, so naturally, Russia leans on protectionism.”Â
Nine out of every ten containers of Russian forest products end up in China
As it stands, China is responsible for taking more than 90% of all lumber produced by Russia (accounting for more than 63% of all lumber imported into China every year). Russia’s timber giants are now leaning on Chinese know-how to refurbish huge volumes of plant and equipment.
According to China Customs, Sino-Russian bilateral trade increased 26.3% year-on-year to US$240 billion in 2023 – with China’s exports to Russia rising 47% to $111 billion and China’s imports from Russia, including oil, gas, metals, timber and paper, rising 12.7% to $129 billion.
In the first ten months of this year, China exported $94 billion of goods to Russia, up 80% from the same period in 2021. Considering China’s $367 billion trade surplus with the US in 2023, President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to impose tariffs to force China to buy more American goods.
“In the past few years, China and Russia seemed to have a perfect understanding of each other from energy cooperation to joint military exercises,” Zhou Yang, a Henan-based columnist, said in an article published last week. “But the recent tariff announcement has cast a shadow on this friendship.”
Zhou claimed Russia desperately needed China’s goods and investments but refused to share economic benefits or military technologies with China. He said Chinese people would not forget that the Russian Empire occupied 1.5 million square kilometres of China’s land in the 1900s and that the Soviet Union pushed the separation of Outer Mongolia, now called Mongolia, from China in 1911.
