Calling it a potentially disastrous development for thousands of small businesses, the top executive for a major US importer predicts that today's announcement by the US Department of Commerce of its decision to impose a 22.14% anti-dumping penalty on Chinese hardwood plywood will cause prices to increase, severely jeopardizing the livelihoods of tens of thousands of small businesses.

In an effort to protect 1,800 US manufacturing jobs, the US Department of Commerce has inexplicably chosen to impose an exorbitant countervailing duty on most manufacturers of Chinese hardwood plywood even though a sampling of these mills indicated no basis for a duty. The action may also have inadvertently threatened the livelihoods of more than 20,000 US cabinet makers, boat builders, furniture makers and other American craftsmen and manufacturers according to the President of Shelter Forest International (SFI), a leading importer of hardwood plywood and Interested Party in the trade case.

The Philippines Bureau of Customs (BOC) said it will ratchet up efforts to prevent alleged "substandard" plywood from being smuggled into the country from China.