The duty orders did not move the supply base. US Census import data shows it had already moved seven months earlier, and not to the country most people assume.
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When the United States applied antidumping and countervailing duties to molded fibre tableware from China and Vietnam in January, the assumption was straightforward: the orders would push sourcing elsewhere, and India, the obvious low-cost alternative, would absorb it.
US Census import data for the seventeen months to May 2026 says otherwise on both counts.
The shift happened before the orders, not after
China supplied 67.8 percent of US molded fibre tableware imports by value in January 2025. By May 2026 that was 3.9 percent.
The critical detail is the timing. Thailand overtook China in June 2025, seven months before the orders took effect on 27 January 2026. By the time the duties applied, the supply base had already moved.
That reframes what the orders did. They did not cause the shift. They formalised one that importers had already made, presumably while the investigations were running and the outcome was becoming predictable. Buyers who waited for the final determination were late.
Figure 1. Share of US molded fibre tableware import value by country of origin, January 2025 to May 2026. Source: US Census Bureau, HS 4823.70.0020. Chart: Ecofy.
Thailand took it, India did not
Thailand went from 0.7 percent of US import value to 44.4 percent. It is now the largest origin by a wide margin.
India moved from 0.9 percent to 4.8 percent. That is real growth in proportional terms, but it left India as the seventh largest origin in May 2026, behind Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan and the Dominican Republic.
The assumption that duties on China redirect volume to India is not what the figures show. Indonesia, starting from effectively zero, reached 10.5 percent and overtook India comfortably.
The Vietnam anomaly
Vietnam is the finding most likely to surprise importers, because it contradicts the simple version of the story.
Vietnam was named in the same orders as China. It supplied 11.1 percent of US imports in January 2025 and 10.6 percent in May 2026. It barely moved.
Two origins, the same trade action, and completely different outcomes. That points to something the headline rates obscure: these duties are set per exporter, not per country. A producer with a favourable company-specific rate remains viable, while an unlisted producer receiving the country-wide rate does not. Aggregate country figures hide that entirely, which is why “avoid China and Vietnam” is a poor sourcing rule and “know your exporter’s rate” is a good one.
The market itself contracted
Composition was not the only thing that changed. Total US import value for this category fell from 23.1 million dollars in January 2025 to 13.6 million in May 2026, a fall of 41 percent.
So this was not simply a reallocation of stable demand between origins. The category shrank substantially while it re-sorted. Anyone reading rising Thai volumes as evidence of a growing market is reading half the picture.
What this means for an importer
Three practical points follow.
- Origin is a document, not a shipping route. The orders reach goods finished or processed in a third country if that processing would not have removed them from scope had it been done in the country of manufacture. Certificates of origin and production records need to support what is declared on the entry.
- The rate that matters is your supplier’s, not the country’s. Company-specific rates are published in the final determinations. An exporter not individually listed takes the country-wide rate, which is the least favourable in the set. Two importers buying identical product from two factories in the same country can face very different landed costs.
- Classification decides whether the orders reach you at all. Commerce identifies HTSUS 4823.70.0020 and 4823.70.0040 as the primary lines, and subject goods may also enter under several 4823.61 and 4823.69 subheadings. That is worth confirming with a licensed customs broker rather than assuming.
A note on the data
These figures come from US Census trade data at the ten-digit tariff line rather than the six-digit heading. That distinction matters more than it sounds: the broader heading mixes foodservice tableware with egg cartons and industrial packaging, and analysing at six digits produces a materially different, and wrong, picture of where India sits.
The full monthly dataset by country is published openly, with the methodology and commodity code stated, and is free to use with attribution. The underlying Census figures are not subject to copyright.
Author bio
Sameer Kulkarni leads compliance and sustainability at Ecofy, a compostable molded-fibre foodservice packaging manufacturer.
