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US believes VN exports are too cheap, will investigate plastic bag industry 2009-10-30 - VNNet Bridge/Plastics Today (US)

Vietnam must face another anti-dumping complaint, this time by the American makers of plastic shopping bags.

The US Department of Commerce (USDOC) on October 27 issued a ‘preliminary determination’ that exporters in Vietnam, Indonesia and Taiwan have been dumping plastic bags in the US market. According to the American newswire Plastics Today, the exporters now must deposit cash or bonds equal to the estimated dumping amount every time they send a shipment to a US customer, pending a final determination.

‘Dumping’ is generally defined as selling goods at a price below their cost of production.

Plastics Today reported that the anti-dumping complaint was filed by two US plastic bag makers that claimed their business is unfairly impacted by the low-priced imports.

USDOC set the ‘dumping margin’ (estimated dumping amount) for the Indonesian plastic bag makers at 67 percent, for the Taiwanese manufacturers at from 29 to 96 percent, and for the Vietnamese manufacturers at from 52 to 76 percent. For the Vietnamese bag makers, that means that if more bags are imported from Vietnam, a surcharge of 52 to 76 percent of their sales price must be deposited into an escrow account each time.

USDOC now must investigate the actual situation and make a final determination within 135 days. Presumably it will send investigators to gather data directly from the Vietnamese and other bag makers, as it has done in dumping investigations of shrimp and ‘tra’ and ‘basa’ catfish from Vietnam.

If the investigation upholds the preliminary finding, some or all of the deposited funds will be taken and the US will establish an anti-dumping tariff on continued plastic bag imports. If the investigators decide that the dumping complaint is in error, however, the funds put in escrow will be returned to the exporters.

According to US data, over seven million plastic bags annually were exported from Vietnam to the US in 2007 and 2008. Nearly three million bags were exported there from Indonesia, and about 4.5 million from Taiwan.

Vietnam, together with China, is also fighting a dumping complaint by European shoe manufacturers.

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