The preliminary determination announced Oct. 28 means that importers of plastic grocery and shopping bags from those three regions will have to post a bond or pay a cash deposit to cover the estimated antidumping duties.

The ruling was in response to a petition filed seven months ago by the law firm King & Spalding LLP on behalf of U.S. plastic bag manufacturers Hilex Poly Co. LLC, and Superbag Corp.

“The antidumping duties should restore fair competition to the U.S market. said Joe Dorn, a partner in the Washington office of King & Spalding, in a prepared statement. “This will give these U.S. companies the opportunity to maintain U.S. plants and U.S. jobs instead of continuing to lose market share to unfairly priced imports.�

Altogether, Commerce imposed 22 company-specific antidumping duties against 18 Vietnamese companies, two from India and two from Taiwan.

The preliminary dumping margins calculated by Commerce range from 67.18 percent to 67.62 percent for bags imported from Indonesia, from 52.30 percent to 76.11 percent for bags imported from Vietnam, and 28.69 percent to 95.81 percent for bags imported from Taiwan.

The highest dumping margin levied was 95.81 percent for bags imported from Ipsido Corp. of Taiwan. The next highest dumping margins imposed were 76.11 percent for bags imported from two Vietnamese companies, Advance Polybag Co. Ltd. and Fotai Vietnam Enterprise Corp, and 67.62 percent for bags imported from PT Sido Bangun of Indonesia, and 67.18 percent for bags imported from PT Super Exim Sari Ltd., also of Indonesia.

In addition, antidumping duties of 76.11 percent were imposed on bags imported from Vietnamese companies not specifically named. The antidumping duties imposed on bags imported from Indonesian companies not specifically named was 69.40 percent and 28.69 percent on Taiwanese companies not specifically named.

The International Trade Commission had made a preliminary determination in May that the U.S. bag manufacturing industry had suffered materially injury because bags from Indonesia, Taiwan, and Vietnam were being dumped, or sold below fair market value, in the United States.

The final antidumping duty orders are slated to go into effect in the spring, after Commerce and the ITC make their preliminary determinations final.

The number of plastic bags exported from Indonesia, Vietnam and Taiwan more than doubled from 6.8 billion in 2006 to 14.6 billion in 2008, increasing the market share of those three countries from a total of 7 percent to 15 percent. In that same time frame, Dorn said the value of bags exported from those three countries nearly tripled — from $63.5 million in 2006 to $182 million in 2008.

According to Commerce Department statistics, Vietnam is the second-largest exporter of plastic retail bags to the U.S., with bag exports valued at nearly $86 million in 2008, up from just over $19 million in 2006. A number of Chinese bag manufacturers moved their operations to Vietnam after Commerce and ITC imposed antidumping duties of bags from China, Thailand and Malaysia in 2004.