By Andrzej Zwaniecki
Washington File staff writer

Washington -- Imports of color television receivers from China were dumped on the U.S. market, the Commerce Department has ruled.

In a November 24 preliminary affirmative determination the department calculated the dumping margins ranged from 27.94 percent to 45.87 percent.

Commerce, however, ended the case against imports of the same goods from Malaysia.

Imposition of antidumping duties requires final affirmative determinations both from the Commerce Department that dumping occurred and from the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) that the imports injured or threatened U.S. industry.

Commerce is expected to make a final ruling in April 2004.

The department also found a reasonable basis to believe that critical circumstances exist in regard to imports of color TV sets from China. If Commerce and USITC make final affirmative determinations on critical circumstances, antidumping duties may be applied retroactively on imports that entered the country since August.

Dumping is the import of goods at a price below the home-market or a third-country price or below the cost of production. A dumping margin represents by how much the fair-value price exceeds the dumped price.

While no U.S. company produces TV sets under a domestic brand, several assemble them in the United States for Japanese companies such as Sanyo, Sharp and Toshiba.

One of the U.S. assemblers -- Five Rivers Electronic Innovations -- filed the case in May, joined by communication and electrical workers' unions.

Earlier, a U.S. committee chaired by Commerce decided to invoke safeguard measures allowing the United States to impose temporary duties or quotas on imports of three textile products from China.

The Chinese government said it regretted the November 17 textiles decision, which it added would hurt "normal" trade between the two countries, according to news reports. China also threatened to appeal to the World Trade Organization and cancelled an official buying trip to the United States. Potential Chinese purchasing contracts were intended to alleviate growing U.S. concerns about its huge trade deficit with China.