The US Department of Commerce (DOC) has announced the extension of the deadline for issuing its final conclusion on a trade remedy duty evasion investigation into hardwood plywood imported from Viet Nam, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT).

Accordingly, the DOC plans to issue the conclusion on October 17.

Currently, the US is applying an anti-dumping duty of 183.36 per cent and an anti-subsidy tax of 22.98 per cent to 194.9 per cent on the product from China.

US customs said Viet Nam’s hardwood plywood exports to the US increased from US$112.3 million in 2018 to $226.4 million in 2019, $248.5 million in 2020 and $356.7 million last year. The export turnover expanded by 57.6 per cent in 2021 compared to the year before the initiation of the investigation.

According to the DOC’s preliminary conclusions, plywood from Viet Nam using materials from China should be subject to the same anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties applied to China. If the materials are produced in Viet Nam or other countries, the products will be exempt from any duties.

The department will ask the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to continue suspending liquidity and require importers to pay a deposit equal to the provisional anti-avoidance tax rate for shipments from Viet Nam since June 17, 2020 when the investigation was announced.

Vietnamese exporters and US importers have been allowed to participate in the self-certification mechanism to be excluded from the evasion measure.

However, the self-certification mechanism is not applied to enterprises that fail to provide information or provide incomplete or inaccurate information as requested by the DOC during the investigation.

Statistics show businesses eligible for the self-certification mechanism made up about 80 per cent of Viet Nam’s export value during the investigation period.

Relevant parties should send their written comments on the DOC's preliminary findings, and a written request for a hearing on the comments must be submitted to the department within 30 days of the announcement of the preliminary conclusions. The DOC will also verify the information before issuing a final conclusion. — VNS