Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Commerce issued antidumping and countervailing duty orders for thermoformed molded fiber products imported from China and Vietnam. These took effect immediately upon Commerce publishing the duty orders Jan. 27, and they run for five years, with the possibility of extensions.
- This action follows the U.S. International Trade Commission’s final determination in December that these molded fiber products, commonly used for food service applications, were being sold into the United States at less-than-fair value and materially harmed the domestic industry.
- Commerce says U.S. Customs and Border Protection now will assess “antidumping duties equal to the amount by which the normal value of the merchandise exceeds the export price.” The American Molded Fiber Coalition, which filed the petition that initiated the case, said duties could be as high as 540% for certain Chinese producers and 260% for Vietnamese producers, depending on the manufacturer.
Dive Insight:
The federal government accepts petitions related to antidumping and countervailing duty cases on a rolling basis and launches investigations where it sees fit. The duties are separate from, and added onto, other country- or material-specific tariffs the Trump administration has announced over the last year.
The American Molded Fiber Coalition comprises the two companies Genera and Tellus Products, as well as the United Steelworkers Union. The coalition filed its petition in October 2024 because “they were seeing time and time again that they were losing sales and losing accounts to very low-priced imports from China and Vietnam,” said Yohai Baisburd, partner at Cassidy Levy Kent and lead counsel for AMFC.
Prior to filing, the group’s research suggested that producers in China and Vietnam were dumping products, or pricing them below market value, in the United States in addition to potentially receiving subsidies from their own governments. Both of those are considered unfair trade in the United States and other countries, Baisburd said, so the coalition submitted a petition to request that the U.S. federal government investigate.
“What the law seeks to achieve is a level playing field so that [foreign producers] don't get an unfair advantage because of the unfairly traded imports,” Baisburd said. “We're hoping that people play by the rules and pay the appropriate duties.”
Molded fiber products included in the petition include — but are not limited to — food service items such as plates, bowls, clamshells, trays and lids. Certain paper plates from China and Vietnam are excluded from the new measures because they’re already covered under antidumping and countervailing duties issued last year. Also excluded are molded fiber products imported for the purpose of enclosing and protecting saleable merchandise such as a cell phone.
AMFC intends to monitor the duty implementation and enforcement to ensure the money is properly collected and that exporters from the affected countries don’t try to circumvent the duties, Baisburd said.
That concern also has come up in other unrelated antidumping and countervailing duty cases, such as last year’s regarding disposable aluminum containers, pans, trays and lids from China. The Aluminum Foil Container Manufacturers Association, which filed that complaint along with some member companies, raised concerns that Chinese companies were circumventing U.S. duties by transshipping their aluminum foil containers through other countries in southeast Asia.
AMFC says the federal government’s new actions will lead to reinvestment and job growth for the U.S. molded fiber products industry.
“It should result, over time, in increased sales and profitability for U.S. producers, because they're not going to lose sales ... or reduce their pricing” when competing with the Chinese or Vietnamese producers, Baisburd said. “That, in turn, will create more opportunity for reinvestment and hiring additional people and running more shifts.”
The molded fiber packaging market, especially for food and food service applications, has been a growth area in recent years, and that trajectory is projected to accelerate. Molded fiber is an area where manufacturers have innovated in recent years, including for lids, plastic ring replacement for multipacks and dry molded fiber technologies.
