The last trickle of Chinese hardwood plywood traded into the United States just got a whole lot more expensive, with the US Department of Commerce slapping a preliminary antidumping duty of 187.27% on imports, and it will be applied retroactively on a trade that has already collapsed from 2 million cubic metres in 2016 to just 52,800 cubic metres last year.
Starting from later today — March 2, 2026, the date the notice was published in the Federal Register — US Customs and Border Protection will begin suspending liquidation and collecting cash deposits at the applicable rates after Commerce found that hardwood and decorative plywood from China was sold in the United States at less than fair value between October 2024 and March 2025.
The duties land on top of the 81.34% preliminary countervailing duties Commerce announced in January, according to the Coalition for Fair Trade in Hardwood Plywood, meaning Chinese plywood now faces combined preliminary duties of around 267%.
“This decision by the Department of Commerce is another critical step in levelling the playing field for American hardwood and decorative plywood manufacturers,” according to Timothy C. Brightbill, lead counsel to the Coalition and co-chair of Wiley’s International Trade Practice. “The domestic industry has been harmed for decades by dumped and subsidised hardwood and decorative plywood.”
Commerce also made a preliminary finding of critical circumstances for the China-wide entity, which means duties will be collected retroactively on affected unliquidated entries made on or after December 2, 2025, 90 days before publication of the notice.
Wood Central understands that the China-wide entity includes Linyi Evergreen Wood Co., Ltd. and Xuzhou Shelter Import and Export Co., Ltd., among other non-responsive producers and exporters. Commerce said it relied on adverse inferences after the selected respondents failed to respond to its antidumping questionnaire — a move that effectively guaranteed the highest possible duty rate.
But if Chinese plywood has all but vanished from the US market, the question is: where is it all coming from now?
Vietnam and Indonesia step in
Last year, Wood Central reported extensively that China had been using “friendly actor” countries — particularly Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia — to circumvent federal antidumping laws and funnel huge volumes of plywood into the US supply chain. That pattern is now embedded in the data.
As it stands, the United States imported about 3.23 million cubic metres of hardwood plywood in 2025 — up 20% year-on-year — with Vietnam supplying up to 30% of the total share, or 980,000 cubic metres (up 33%), and Indonesia shipping 891,000 cubic metres (up 40%), or 28%. Together, the two countries now account for nearly 60% of all hardwood plywood entering the US — a market China once dominated.
And whilst Chinese trade has declined, Malaysia and Thailand posted the fastest growth among the top suppliers, with volumes rising 65% to 133,000 cubic metres and 70% to 108,000 cubic metres, respectively. Cambodia delivered 171,000 cubic metres (up 22%), Finland surged 186% to 84,000 cubic metres, and Italy rose 112% to 66,000 cubic metres. Canada slipped 17% to 183,000 cubic metres, Spain fell sharply — down 64% to 96,000 cubic metres — and Russia shipped 178,000 cubic metres, up 3%.
By species, birch plywood totalled 1.71 million cubic metres, followed by non-tropical hardwood plywood at 1.17 million cubic metres and tropical plywood at 332,000 cubic metres. Over the period 2019–2025, annual import volume ranged from 2.71 million cubic metres in 2024 to a peak of 5.30 million cubic metres in 2021 during the COVID-era construction boom, with the average import price moving from US$439 per cubic metre in 2020 to US$743 last year.
Now, Vietnam and Indonesia are also in the firing line
And that’s exactly where the next battle is being fought. Commerce didn’t just go after China — it set preliminary dumping margins of 19.98% to 84.94% on Indonesian imports and a punishing 196.14% on Vietnamese imports, a rate even higher than China’s. Those duties add to the countervailing duties announced in January, which ranged from 2.40% to 128.66% for Indonesia and 4.37% to 26.75% for Vietnam.
The Coalition for Fair Trade in Hardwood Plywood — whose members include Columbia Forest Products, Commonwealth Plywood, Manthei Wood Products, States Industries, and Timber Products — filed its petition in May 2025, alleging dumping margins as high as 474% for China. The US International Trade Commission sided with the domestic industry in July last year, finding a reasonable indication that imports from all three countries were materially injuring US producers.
Commerce plans to issue its final determination for China by May 10, 2026, after which the ITC will decide whether the US industry was materially injured. Final determinations for Indonesia and Vietnam are expected by mid-July 2026. If both Commerce and the ITC reach affirmative final determinations, antidumping and countervailing duty orders will be issued for a minimum of five years.
With China’s volumes already at rock bottom, the real question now is what happens to the nearly 1.9 million cubic metres flowing in from Vietnam and Indonesia — the two countries that stepped in to fill the gap and are now squarely in Commerce’s crosshairs.
- To learn more about the flood of plywood from China, Indonesia, and Vietnam entering the US supply chain, click here for Wood Central’s special feature.
