Certain Paper Plates From the People's Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Initiation of Countervailing Duty Investigations

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[C-570-165; C-552-840]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Certain Paper Plates From the People's Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Initiation of Countervailing Duty Investigations</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, Department of Commerce. <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable February 14, 2024. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Mary Kolberg (Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Vietnam)) and Eliza DeLong (People's Republic of China (China)), AD/CVD Operations, Offices I and V, respectively, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-1785 or (202) 482-3878, respectively. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">The Petitions</HD> On January 25, 2024, the U.S. Department of Commerce (Commerce) received countervailing duty (CVD) petitions concerning imports of certain paper plates (paper plates) from China and Vietnam filed in proper form on behalf of the American Paper Plate Coalition (the petitioner). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The CVD petitions were accompanied by antidumping duty (AD) petitions concerning imports of paper plates from China, Thailand, and Vietnam. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Petitioner's Letter, “Petitions for the Imposition of Antidumping and Countervailing Duties: Certain Paper Plates from the People's Republic of China, The Kingdom of Thailand, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” dated January 25, 2024 (Petitions). The members of the American Paper Plate Coalition are AJM Packaging Corporation, Aspen Products, Inc., Dart Container Corporation, Hoffmaster Group, Inc., Huhtamaki Americas, Inc., and Unique Industries, Inc. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> Between January 29 and February 6, 2024, Commerce requested supplemental information pertaining to certain aspects of the Petitions in separate supplemental questionnaires. <FTREF/> <SU>3</SU> The petitioner filed responses to the supplemental questionnaires between January 31 and February 8, 2024. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Commerce's Letters, “Petitions for the Imposition of Antidumping and Countervailing Duties on Imports of Certain Paper Plates from the People's Republic of China, Thailand, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Supplemental Questions,” dated January 29, 2024 (General Issues Questionnaire); <E T="03">see also</E> “Petition for the Imposition of Countervailing Duties on Imports of Certain Paper Plates from Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Supplemental Questions,” dated January 29, 2024; “Petition for the Imposition of Countervailing Duties on Imports of Certain Paper Plates from the People's Republic of China: Supplemental Questions,” dated January 30, 2024; and Memorandum, “Phone Call,” dated February 6, 2024 (February 6 Memorandum). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Petitioner's Letters, “Certain Paper Plates from the People's Republic of China: Response to Supplemental Questionnaire for Volume III of the Petition,” dated January 31, 2024; <E T="03">see also</E> “Certain Paper Plates from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Response to Supplemental Questionnaire for Volume V of the Petition,” dated February 1, 2024; “Certain Paper Plates from the People's Republic of China, Thailand, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Petitioner's Responses to Supplemental Questions—General Issues,” dated February 2, 2024 (First General Issues Supplement); “Certain Paper Plates from the People's Republic of China, Thailand, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Petitioner's Responses to Supplemental Questions—General Issues,” dated February 8, 2024 (Second General Issues Supplement). </FTNT> In accordance with section 702(b)(1) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act), the petitioner alleges that the Government of China (GOC) and the Government of Vietnam (GOV) (collectively, Governments) are providing countervailable subsidies, within the meaning of sections 701 and 771(5) of the Act, to producers of paper plates from China and Vietnam, and that such imports are materially injuring, or threatening material injury to, the domestic industry producing paper plates in the United States. Consistent with section 702(b)(1) of the Act and 19 CFR 351.202(b), for those alleged programs on which we are initiating CVD investigations, the Petitions were accompanied by information reasonably available to the petitioner supporting its allegations. Commerce finds that the petitioner filed the Petitions on behalf of the domestic industry because the petitioner is an interested party as defined in section 771(9)(F) of the Act. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> Commerce also finds that the petitioner demonstrated sufficient industry support for the initiation of the requested CVD investigations. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  The members of the American Paper Plate Coalition are interested parties as defined under section 771(9)(C) of the Act. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> “Determination of Industry Support for the Petitions” section, <E T="03">infra.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Period of Investigation</HD> Because the Petitions were filed on January 25, 2024, the period of investigation (POI) for China and Vietnam is January 1, 2023, through December 31, 2023. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 19 CFR 351.204(b)(2). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Investigations</HD> The merchandise covered by these investigations is paper plates from China and Vietnam. For a full description of the scope of these investigations, <E T="03">see</E> the appendix to this notice. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments on the Scope of the Investigations</HD> On January 29 and February 6, 2024, Commerce requested information and clarification from the petitioner regarding the proposed scope to ensure that the scope language in the Petitions is an accurate reflection of the products for which the domestic industry is seeking relief. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> On February 2 and 8, 2024, the petitioner provided clarifications and revised the scope. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> The description of merchandise covered by these investigations, as described in the appendix to this notice, reflects these clarifications. <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> General Issues Questionnaire; <E T="03">see also</E> February 6 Memorandum. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> First General Issues Supplement at 5-11; <E T="03">see also</E> Second General Issues Supplement at 3-6. </FTNT> As discussed in the <E T="03">Preamble</E> to Commerce's regulations, we are setting aside a period for interested parties to raise issues regarding product coverage ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> scope). <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> Commerce will consider all comments received from interested parties and, if necessary, will consult with interested parties prior to the issuance of the preliminary determinations. If scope comments include factual information, all such factual information should be limited to public information. <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> To facilitate preparation of its questionnaires, Commerce requests that scope comments be submitted by 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) on March 5, 2024, which is 20 calendar days from the signature date of this notice. <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> Any rebuttal comments, which may include factual information, must be filed by 5 p.m. ET on March 15, 2024, which is 10 calendar days from the initial comment deadline. <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>   <E T="03">See Antidumping Duties; Countervailing Duties; Final Rule,</E> 62 FR 27296, 27323 (May 19, 1997) ( <E T="03">Preamble</E> ); <E T="03">see also</E> 19 CFR 351.312. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 19 CFR 351.102(b)(21) (defining “factual information”). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>12</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 19 CFR 351.303(b)(1). </FTNT> Commerce requests that any factual information that parties consider relevant to the scope of these investigations be submitted during that period. However, if a party subsequently finds that additional factual information pertaining to the scope of the investigations may be relevant, the party must contact Commerce and request permission to submit the additional information. All scope comments must be filed simultaneously on the records of the concurrent AD and CVD investigations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Filing Requirements</HD> All submissions to Commerce must be filed electronically via Enforcement and Compliance's Antidumping Duty and Countervailing Duty Centralized Electronic Service System (ACCESS), unless an exception applies. <SU>13</SU> <FTREF/> An electronically-filed document must be received successfully in its entirety by the time and date it is due. <FTNT> <SU>13</SU>   <E T="03">See Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Proceedings: Electronic Filing Procedures; Administrative Protective Order Procedures,</E> 76 FR 39263 (July 6, 2011); <E T="03">see also Enforcement and Compliance; Change of Electronic Filing System Name,</E> 79 FR 69046 (November 20, 2014), for details of Commerce's electronic filing requirements, effective August 5, 2011. Information on using ACCESS can be found at <E T="03">https://access.trade.gov/help.aspx</E> and a handbook can be found at <E T="03">https://access.trade.gov/help/Handbook_on_Electronic_Filing_Procedures.pdf.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Consultations</HD> Pursuant to sections 702(b)(4)(A)(i) and (ii) of th ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 38k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━