WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Commerce has assigned final dumping margins of zero percent to three Chinese wood bedroom producers for their 2009 shipments.

The DOC assigned the rates as part of a new shipper review of Dongguan Huansheng Furniture Co. Ltd., Wanvog Furniture (Kunshan) Co. Ltd. and Hangzhou Cadman Trading Co. Ltd., (Haining Changbei Furniture Co. Ltd.)

The companies were part of a new shipper review because they did not have a previous history of shipping wood bedrooms to the U.S. market.

The antidumping duties are the U.S. government's way of leveling the playing field for U.S. producers that have been injured by unfairly priced imports produced below material costs, a violation of international trade laws. They are assigned to the factories, but paid by importers of record that purchase goods from those factories.

By assigning zero percent duties to these factories, the government has determined that they were not guilty of dumping product onto the U.S. market during the 2009 period of review.

In a related decision, the DOC also has deemed that the Philippines remains the appropriate surrogate producer country the government uses to compares pricing with Chinese bedrooms.