Miller, Colleagues Send Letter to U.S. Department of Commerce to Revisit Regulations on Hardwood Imports

Washington D.C. - Today, Congresswoman Carol Miller (R-WV) and seven of her colleagues sent a letter to the United States Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, asking Commerce to revisit its anti-circumvention inquiry into imports of hardwood plywood and the impact the certification regime has on U.S. hardwood companies.

Click here for the full letter.

Joining Congresswoman Miller in sending the letter are Representatives Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA), Pat Fallon (R-TX), Mike Kelly (R-PA), Glenn Thompson (R-PA), Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), Ben Cline (R-VA), and Jack Bergman (R-MI).

On the United States Department of Commerce's anti-circumvention inquiry into imports from Vietnam and its impact on the U.S. hardwood industry:

We again write to express our interest in the pending antidumping/countervailing (AD/CVD) administrative review on hardwood plywood. We are interested in the impact the current anti-circumvention action continues to have on a significant employer in our districts. Northwest Hardwoods (NWH) is primarily a producer of wood products operating 20 facilities in twelve states.

In 2020, the Department of Commerce (Commerce) initiated an anti-circumvention inquiry into imports of hardwood plywood from Vietnam. As part of that inquiry, DOC stated that "{t}he merchandise subject to these anticircumvention and scope inquiries does not include core veneers fully produced in Vietnam or a third country that are assembled into a veneer core platform in Vietnam and combined with a face and back veneer produced in China." This announcement was helpful to NWH because the products it imports are out of scope of the inquiry. However, Commerce concluded that these products are physically indistinguishable from the in-scope imports and therefore imposed a certification regime to ascertain whether imports are subject to the scope of the relevant orders. Unfortunately, through no fault of its own, NWH's imports are currently not eligible for the certification regime. The administrative review, therefore, represents an opportunity for Commerce to revisit its decision about which importers can participate in the certification regime.

On the importance of revisiting the anti-circumvention inquiry to protect United States companies and the economy:

NWH, like other wood products companies, supports efforts of your department to enforce our trade laws against unfairly subsidized wood products originating from China. In doing business with Vietnamese exporters, NWH made diligent efforts to ensure that such products were sourced and processed in Vietnam. In fact, it retained a third-party auditing firm that provided assurance that all its imported products originated in Vietnam and were consistent with Commerce Department regulations.

The preliminary decision issued by Commerce on August 8, 2024, allowed several additional Vietnamese exporters to participate in the certification regime because these companies have satisfactorily responded to questionnaires about the source of their export products. The Vietnamese companies that failed to respond remain subject to anti-circumvention duties.

NWH is confident that all the product it imported was of Vietnamese origin, outside the scope of the anti-circumvention inquiry, and has already shared some of that information with Commerce in April 2024. We urge your department to consider such information from NWH and other potentially affected importers as it renders its final decisions. We believe that American companies should not be disadvantaged due to a failure by Vietnamese firms to fully comply with questionnaires, where Commerce has independent record information confirming that a U.S. company's imports are outside the scope of the relevant orders.

The significant duties that Commerce previously instructed CBP to levy would cause severe harm to NWH's U.S operations, potentially causing layoff of many employees as is the strain on its financial resources could force it to idle facilities. As you consider these issues, we urge you to carefully assess impacts upon domestic companies such as NWH and the economic harm rendered to U.S. companies and their employees if they are unfairly harmed in this process.

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