In recent years, China’s overcapacity has led to a massive influx of low-priced goods being exported overseas, causing industries globally to suffer losses and raising significant concerns and attention internationally. The United States, after imposing anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese mattresses, discovered that China was channeling a large number of cheap mattresses to the U.S. market through third countries.
Similar to the overcapacity in clean energy technology fields such as electric vehicles, solar panels, and lithium batteries, which pose a threat to competitive enterprises in the U.S. and other countries, the flooding of these low-priced mattresses into the American market has forced local companies to abandon the low-price market and implement workforce reductions.
The Trump administration has been strictly enforcing U.S. trade laws, initiating numerous anti-dumping, anti-subsidy investigations, and sanctions against the Chinese government. Since 2019, the U.S. Department of Commerce has imposed anti-dumping duties of up to 1732% on mattresses produced in China, South Africa, and Vietnam.
According to a report by The Wall Street Journal on Monday (July 15), U.S. retailers and manufacturers suspect that some Chinese manufacturers are using other countries to transit mattresses to conceal their country of origin, thereby avoiding tariffs.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is currently investigating several importers suspected of shipping mattresses to the U.S. for the Chinese company Foshan Aiyi Household Products through South Korea. This Chinese company also sells its products on the Amazon.com market.
On the official website of Foshan Aiyi Household Products, it is stated that in 2019, in response to U.S. anti-dumping measures, the company invested heavily in building a 35,000 square meter factory in Vietnam. However, in the same year, the U.S. also began imposing anti-dumping duties on mattresses produced in Vietnam.
Documents issued by CBP to more than a dozen importers on February 16 stated that based on CBP’s preliminary investigation, there are reasonable grounds to suspect that these importers are using South Korea to import mattresses in order to evade relevant taxes and fees. As a result, CBP has implemented temporary measures for further investigation.
The report indicates that Foshan Aiyi is a “Chinese company with multiple mattress brand trademarks sold in the U.S.,” with as many as ten publicly available English trademarks.
In this CBP report, it is mentioned that import data from the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) shows a “significant increase” in mattress imports from Korea starting from April 2023. The number of imports surged from 8,493 pieces in March 2023 to 21,842 pieces in April 2023 (a 157% increase), nearly tripling to 64,676 pieces in May 2023 (a 661% increase over two months), and by August 2023, the total number of mattresses imported from Korea was 95,846 – a 1028% increase since March.
Industry insiders familiar with Korea’s mattress production capacity provided sworn statements during CBP’s investigation, explaining that based on their knowledge of the Korean market, there were no mattress manufacturing businesses sufficient to support the recent surge in imports to the U.S.
The influx of a large number of low-cost mattresses from China and other low-cost producers into the U.S. market has resulted in declining sales for American companies, a decrease in market share, forced cost-cutting measures through layoffs, and even bankruptcy filings.
According to The Wall Street Journal, a representative of one of the largest mattress manufacturers in the U.S., Serta Simmons, stated at a May hearing of the International Trade Commission that the influx of cheap imported products has intensified the company’s difficulties in a sluggish market. Since 2018, the company has halved its factory workforce to just 2000 employees. Serta Simmons filed for bankruptcy protection in 2023.