Lumber & flooring

A wood entry can be stopped by a species name, a deposit rate published three weeks ago, or a pallet nobody looked at. None of those are freight problems, so the freight side will not catch them. We file the declaration, the duty deposit and the tariff claim as one piece of work, before the vessel lands.

The Lacey Act declaration

Every regulated wood entry carries a plant and plant product declaration: the scientific name of the wood at genus and species, the country where it was harvested, the quantity, and the value. It is filed electronically with the entry, not faxed afterwards.

Engineered flooring is where this gets real. A single plank can have an oak wear layer, a poplar or birch core and a different backing, harvested in three countries. That is three declaration lines for one item number, and the mill is the only party who knows the answer. Where a component genuinely cannot be pinned to one species, the rule allows the possible species to be declared, but that allowance exists for real botanical uncertainty. It is not a way to avoid asking your supplier a hard question. The harvest country is the element that gets tested, and the declaration is signed under penalty.

Where the duty actually comes from in 2026

The column one rate on most of Chapter 44 is low or free. It has not been the number that matters for years. What matters now stacks in a specific order, and it stacks per line.

• Softwood from Canada. Antidumping and countervailing orders, with a combined cash deposit rate that is reset by each administrative review. The rate that applies is the one in force on your date of entry, not the one that was quoted when you agreed the price. What you pay at entry is a deposit, not a settled bill: final liability is fixed at liquidation, which can be years later and can go either way.
• Multilayered wood flooring from China. Its own order, with its own scope. Whether your product is inside it is decided by the written scope language, not by what the product is called on the invoice.
• Section 232. The metals action has been extended to timber and lumber, with downstream wood articles in a separate and higher band that stepped up at the start of 2026. The list of covered articles is amended periodically, so the right question is what is on the annex this month.
• Country based add-ons. Section 301 where the goods are of Chinese origin, plus the tariff actions taken under the emergency economic powers statute. These sit on top of everything above rather than replacing it.

What goes wrong

The four failures we see most often on files we take over are all preventable, and all of them cost more than the entry did.

• Flooring filed in the wrong heading. Continuously shaped strip, multilayer panel and assembled panel are different headings with different rates, and the choice can also decide whether an AD/CVD order reaches you at all.
• Species and harvest country copied forward from the last shipment because the item number did not change. The mill changed its supply, and nobody told the broker.
• Wood packaging without a compliant ISPM 15 mark. That is not a fine and a lecture. CBP can order the entire shipment exported, cargo included, and the pallets under your lumber are the ones most likely to fail.
• A deposit rate taken from a stale table after a review published. Underpaying reads as a penalty case later; overpaying is money you will wait years to see.

When something does go wrong at the port, you hear it from us first. If CBP or APHIS holds the container, we tell you what the hold is, what closes it and how long it takes, on the day it happens.

What we need from you

• Commercial invoice written by item, with construction and dimensions, not one line reading “lumber”.
• The mill’s statement of genus, species and country of harvest for each wood component.
• Packing list, bill of lading and the ISPM 15 status of the packing material.
• The producer and exporter names exactly as they appear in the AD/CVD order, plus their case numbers, if the goods are in scope.
• TSCA Title VI certification from the panel producer where there is a composite core. Our wood products and panels page covers that side in detail.
• A bond sized to the deposit, not to the invoice. A large percentage deposit on a few containers will saturate a small continuous bond quickly, and a saturated bond stops everything you import, not just the lumber.