How Russian timber bypasses U.S. sanctions by way of Vietnam

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Russian birch wood has continued to flow to American consumers, disguised as Asian products, despite U.S. economic sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, a new report says.

washingtonpost.com
How Russian timber bypasses U.S. sanctions by way of Vietnam
A new report by the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency says Russian birch wood is routed through Asia before being shipped to American stores.

Link to tweet

ASIA

How Russian timber bypasses U.S. sanctions by way of Vietnam

A new report says Russian birch wood is routed through Asia before being shipped to American stores.

By Michael Tatarski
October 1, 2022 at 2:00 a.m. EDT



Plywood allegedly made from Russian birch is being loaded on a ship in Haiphong, Vietnam, for export to the United States in May 2022. (Obtained by Environmental Investigation Agency)

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — Russian birch wood has continued to flow to American consumers, disguised as Asian products, despite U.S. economic sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, a new report says.

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a nonprofit watchdog group based in Britain, has found that most birch products currently being exported from Vietnam to the United States originate in Russia. According to Vietnam customs data, roughly 40,000 cubic meters of birch wood is transported every month from Russia and China into Vietnam, where it’s assembled into furniture and plywood.

These chairs and bed frames end up on the shelves of major American retailers, the EIA said in a report, which was shared exclusively with The Washington Post.

The group’s investigators spoke to five Chinese companies accounting for 60 percent of China’s birch veneer exports to Vietnam and concluded that over 90 percent of their birch is sourced from Russia. One Chinese wood factory owner told the group that all of the birch their company uses comes from Russia but is repackaged in China and re-exported to Vietnam with China listed as the country of origin. ... “They [American importers] don’t track sources of original materials,” the manager told the EIA. “We have been doing this all the time.”

{snip}