Washington has more than halved its final dumping duty on Vietnamese hardwood plywood to 90.12 per cent, while holding China at 187.27 per cent and settling most Indonesian suppliers at 18.10 per cent, in a set of trade rulings that now turn on a single injury vote. That is according to six final determinations published on Tuesday by the US Department of Commerce, all applicable from 21 July and all awaiting a decision from the US International Trade Commission due by 4 September.
Vietnam earned its reduction by cooperating with the investigation, with Commerce verifying the sales and cost records of two of its producers, Nhat Duy and Trieu Thai Son, over June before replacing the punitive 196.14 per cent preliminary rate with a calculated final margin of 90.12 per cent. That figure, which now applies to 52 named Vietnamese exporters and every other producer in the country, reduces the cash deposit required at the border on a US$100,000 shipment from $196,140 to $90,120.
China followed the opposite path to the same border, with its two largest exporters, Linyi Evergreen Wood and Xuzhou Shelter, refusing to respond to Commerce’s questionnaire, and nine smaller producers ignoring a separate request for shipment data. That refusal left the entire Chinese industry under a punitive 187.27 per cent rate, set by Commerce based on the original petition rather than any figures the companies themselves supplied, alongside a separate subsidy duty that climbed from a preliminary 81.34 per cent to a final 88.96 per cent.
Chinese panels also impose retroactive duties, after Commerce found that importers had rushed shipments in ahead of the case and ordered border officers to hold entries back to 2 December 2025, 90 days before the preliminary determination. Should the ITC confirm injury, the combined bill facing those panels reaches 274.92 per cent, a burden imposed on a trade that has already shrunk from 2 million cubic metres in 2016 to 52,800 cubic metres last year.
“Another critical step in levelling the playing field,” is how Timothy Brightbill, the Wiley Rein partner leading the Coalition for Fair Trade in Hardwood Plywood, described the preliminary margins in February, for petitioners including Columbia Forest Products, Commonwealth Plywood, Manthei Wood Products, States Industries, and Timber Products. The coalition first sought margins as steep as 474 per cent when it filed in May 2025, and its China figure has survived the final round intact.
It comes as Vietnam carries the heaviest commercial exposure of the three, having grown into the largest supplier of hardwood plywood to the United States after the 2018 orders pushed Chinese production offshore. Its exporters sold $9.46 billion of wood products into the American market in 2025, on margins of just 5 to 6 per cent.
“The US is applying inconsistent tariff policies,” Nguyen Quoc Khanh, chairman of the Vietnamese timber association VIFOREST, warned in March. Even at the halved margin, most Vietnamese suppliers face a potential combined bill of 132.63 per cent once the subsidy duty is added, rising to 250.34 per cent for the exporter Junma Phu Tho.
Indonesian producers finished with the lowest rates of the three, with the two mills Commerce examined individually, PT Wijaya Cahaya Timber and PT Wijaya Triutama Plywood Industri, rated at 15.40 per cent and every other Indonesian exporter at 18.10 per cent. Their matching subsidy duties run from 4.22 to 58.39 per cent, leaving most shipments with a combined bill near 58.93 per cent, well below either rival.
One Indonesian company, PT Mustika Buana Sejahtera, sits far above the rest at 84.94 per cent for dumping and 128.66 per cent for subsidies after declining to cooperate, with the rulings coming as Indonesian shipments to the United States fell 60 per cent in the first quarter.
The orders cover the same products as when the case opened: hardwood, decorative plywood, and certain veneered panels. They spare structural plywood stamped to US building standards, the multilayered wood flooring already governed by separate China orders, finished furniture and kitchen cabinets, countertops, and certain door and window parts made from laminated veneer lumber.
Both rulings now pass to the ITC, which heard final arguments on 16 July and must decide, by 4 September, within 45 days, whether the imports are materially injuring American producers. An affirmative finding would confirm the duties for at least 5 years, while a negative finding would terminate the cases and refund all deposits collected since January.
Commerce’s final tables leave a 169.17 percentage-point gap between China’s rate and the one most Indonesian mills now pay, the widest gap in a case the Coalition for Fair Trade in Hardwood Plywood first brought in May 2025.
