diff --git a/fairseq/logging/progress_bar.py b/fairseq/logging/progress_bar.py
index 7dd9d4a23a..ea929ce0ed 100644
--- a/fairseq/logging/progress_bar.py
+++ b/fairseq/logging/progress_bar.py
@@ -289,8 +289,8 @@ def print(self, stats, tag=None, step=None):
 
 
 try:
-    from tensorboardX import SummaryWriter
     _tensorboard_writers = {}
+    from tensorboardX import SummaryWriter
 except ImportError:
     SummaryWriter = None