CPTPP Duty Treatment: Canada to Vietnam

Vietnam is a CPTPP party and the agreement is in force on this route. It is also the one market on this site where the tariff is routinely the largest single number in a landed cost, which makes the preference worth more here than anywhere else in the region, and makes the origin paperwork worth getting right the first time.

Why the preference is large here

Most Vietnamese lines we have confirmed carry a general rate, and on several of them it is high enough on its own to decide whether a programme works. Where CPTPP takes that to nothing, the whole of it is margin, and it is margin a supplier outside the agreement cannot match.

A second effect matters more than the headline rate. Vietnam's schedule escalates with processing across several of the categories Canada sells, so the raw commodity enters cheaply and the milled, cut or branded version does not. Removing that escalation is what makes shipping the processed form possible at all.

The relief depends on documents that start in your plant

The preference is claimed at import, by your buyer, on a certification whose underlying evidence exists only where the product was made. An importer who files without a valid claim pays the general rate, and the conversation that follows is about which of you absorbs it.

So the sequence runs opposite to the way people plan it. The origin file is built before the first container, not assembled once a question arrives. Our article on origin verification sets out what that file has to hold and how long it has to survive.

Claiming it

None of the paperwork is particular to Vietnam. Our article on the certification of origin works through the instrument itself, from who is entitled to sign one to how long the evidence behind it has to survive afterwards.

The point worth lifting out for Vietnam is who signs. A certification may be made by the importer, which means it can be made by somebody who has never seen your bill of materials, on the strength of what you told them. That is permitted, and it does not move the exposure as far as it looks. Decide it deliberately and write it into the supply agreement.