One rule in this series explains more arguments between buyer and seller than any other: anti-dumping and countervailing duty. It is not about origin, and not about classification. It is about whether your product falls inside the text of an order — and if it does, the entry pays a cash deposit that nobody put in the quotation.
The scene, anonymised
A furniture exporter in Binh Duong shipped two containers of the same cabinet to the same US buyer, four months apart. The first cleared normally. The second was flagged, and the broker asked for a cash deposit of 18% of the value before release. Same product, same buyer, same HTS code: what changed was that a final order had been published in between, and the product description in the order covered that cabinet.
How the rule works, in four steps
- Petition and investigation. A domestic industry petitions; the administering authority investigates dumping margin or subsidy.
- Order. If injury is found, an order is published with a product scope and rates: one for each named exporter, an "all others" rate, and a country-wide rate for everyone else.
- Cash deposit at entry. Customs collects the rate at the time of entry, based on the producer or exporter. It is a deposit, not a final duty.
- Review and liquidation. An annual review settles the actual rate; the difference is refunded or billed, often a year or two later.
What decides scope is the words, not the HTS code
An order describes the product in prose — dimensions, materials, finishes, sometimes exclusions. Two products under the same HTS code can sit on opposite sides of the line. That is why an exporter can be inside an order that "does not apply to furniture", and why a scope ruling request exists: it asks the authority to state, in writing, whether a specific product is covered.
A Thai case and a Vietnamese case
Thailand. In solar products, rates have historically differed sharply between exporters, because a company-specific rate depends on proving the exporter is independent of state influence. The same factory can therefore have two entirely different cash deposit rates depending on who is named on the entry.
Vietnam. In wood products, the question is often whether processing in Vietnam created a product inside the scope or outside it. Where a scope ruling has been obtained, it can move a shipment from a deposit to a normal entry; where it has not, the file is exposed to an evasion investigation, which is slower and more expensive than the deposit.
The file to keep
- The order text and the scope paragraph, saved with the date it was checked
- Producer name, address and the rate that applies to that producer — not just the exporter
- Production records: purchase invoices for inputs, factory records, bills of materials
- Any scope ruling or exclusion, and the entry numbers it was applied to
- A written agreement on who funds the cash deposit while it is outstanding
If a shipment is worth a deposit, it is worth ten minutes of checking first. Send us the product description and the HTS code on WhatsApp; we will tell you whether an order is likely to touch it, and what the deposit would do to the landed cost.