Antidumping Duty Order on Hydrofluorocarbon Blends From the People's Republic of China: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Circumvention With Respect to R-410B From the Republic of Turkey

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-570-028]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Antidumping Duty Order on Hydrofluorocarbon Blends From the People's Republic of China: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Circumvention With Respect to R-410B From the Republic of Turkey</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, Department of Commerce. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Department of Commerce preliminarily determines that imports of R-410B from the Republic of Turkey (Turkey), which are completed in Turkey using components originating in the People's Republic of China (China), and further processed in the United States, as specified below, are circumventing the antidumping duty (AD) order on hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) blends from China. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable March 7, 2024. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Melissa Porpotage, AD/CVD Operations, Office IX, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-1413. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On August 19, 2016, Commerce published the <E T="03">Order</E> in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> On July 7, 2023, Commerce initiated a country-wide circumvention inquiry to determine whether imports of R-410B from Turkey, completed in Turkey using HFC components R-32 (difluoromethane) and R-125 (pentafluoroethane) (collectively, China-origin components) manufactured in China, and further processed in the United States are circumventing the <E T="03">Order</E> and, accordingly, should be covered by the scope of the <E T="03">Order.</E> <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> In August 2023, Commerce selected the following two mandatory respondents in this circumvention inquiry: Cantas Ic Ve Dis Ticaret Sogutma Sistermleri Sanayi A.S. (Cantas) and ICE Sogutma Sanayi Ve Ticaret Ltd. (ICE Sogutma). <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> For a complete description of the events that followed the initiation of this circumvention inquiry, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Hydrofluorocarbon Blends from the People's Republic of China: Antidumping Duty Order,</E> 81 FR 55436 (August 19, 2016) ( <E T="03">Order</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See Hydrofluorocarbon Blends from the People's Republic of China: Initiation of Circumvention Inquiries on the Antidumping Duty Order,</E> 88 FR 43275 (July 7, 2023) ( <E T="03">Initiation Notice</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Respondent Selection,” dated August 25, 2023; <E T="03">see also</E> Commerce's Letter, “R-410B from Turkey Initial Questionnaire,” dated August 28, 2023. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Antidumping Duty Order on Hydrofluorocarbon Blends from the People's Republic of China: Preliminary Decision Memorandum for the Circumvention Inquiry with Respect to R-410B from the Republic of Turkey,” dated concurrently with, and hereby adopted by, this notice (Preliminary Decision Memorandum). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Order</HD> The merchandise covered by the <E T="03">Order</E> is certain HFC blends. For a complete description of the scope of the <E T="03">Order, see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> at 3-4. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Merchandise Subject to the Circumvention Inquiry</HD> This circumvention inquiry covers imports of R-410B from Turkey, which are completed in Turkey using China-origin HFC components and further processed in the United States (inquiry merchandise). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Methodology</HD> Commerce is conducting this circumvention inquiry in accordance with section 781(a) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act), and 19 CFR 351.226. For a complete description of the methodology underlying this circumvention inquiry, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. A list of topics discussed in the Preliminary Decision Memorandum is included in Appendix I to this notice. The Preliminary Decision Memorandum is a public document and is on file electronically via Enforcement and Compliance's Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Centralized Electronic Service System (ACCESS). ACCESS is available to registered users at <E T="03">https://access.trade.gov.</E> In addition, a complete version of the Preliminary Decision Memorandum can be accessed directly at <E T="03">https://access.trade.gov/public/FRNoticesListLayout.aspx.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Preliminary Circumvention Determination</HD> As detailed in the Preliminary Decision Memorandum, and the “Application of Facts Available and Use of Adverse Inferences” section, Commerce preliminarily determines that R-410B from Turkey, completed in Turkey using HFC components from China, that is further processed in the United States, is circumventing the <E T="03">Order</E> on a country-wide basis. As a result, in accordance with section 781(a) of the Act, we preliminarily determine that the inquiry merchandise should be included within the scope of the <E T="03">Order. See</E> the “Suspension of Liquidation and Cash Deposit Requirements” section below for details regarding suspension of liquidation and cash deposit requirements. <E T="03">See</E> the “Certifications” and “Certification Requirements for Turkey” sections below for details regarding the use of certifications for inquiry merchandise exported from Turkey. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Use of Adverse Facts Available (AFA)</HD> Pursuant to section 776(a) of the Act, if the necessary information is not available on the record, or an interested party withholds requested information, fails to provide requested information by the deadline or in the form and manner requested, or significantly impedes a proceeding, Commerce shall use the facts otherwise available in reaching the applicable determination. Moreover, pursuant to section 776(b) of the Act, Commerce may use inferences adverse to the interests of an interested party in selecting from among the facts otherwise available if the party fails to cooperate by not acting to the best of its ability to provide requested information. Commerce requested information from Cantas and ICE Sogutma. In these initial questionnaires, Commerce explained that, if the company to which Commerce issued the questionnaire fails to respond to the questionnaire, or fails to provide the requested information, Commerce may find that the company failed to cooperate by not acting to the best of its ability to comply with the request for information, and may use an inference that is adverse to the company's interests in selecting from the facts otherwise available. Cantas, one of the mandatory respondents in Turkey, received, but failed to respond to, Commerce's questionnaire. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> at 4-6; <E T="03">see also</E> Memorandum, “Delivery Confirmation,” dated September 1, 2023. </FTNT> Therefore, we preliminarily find that Cantas failed to provide requested information by the deadline or in the form and manner requested, and significantly impeded this inquiry. Moreover, we find that this company failed to cooperate to the best of its ability to provide the requested information because it did not provide a response to Commerce's initial questionnaire. Consequently, we used adverse inferences with respect to Cantas in selecting from among the facts otherwise available on the record, pursuant to sections 776(a) and (b) of the Act. For details regarding the AFA used in this preliminary determination, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. As detailed in the Preliminary Decision Memorandum, based on AFA, we preliminarily determine that Cantas further processed the inquiry merchandise in the United States into subject merchandise, and that U.S. entries of that merchandise are circumventing the <E T="03">Order.</E> Additionally, we preliminarily find that Cantas is precluded from participating in the certification program that we are establishing for exports of R-410B completed in Turkey using HFC components from China, that is further processed in the United States. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Suspension of Liquidation and Cash Deposit Requirements</HD> Based on the preliminary affirmative country-wide determination of circumvention for Turkey, in accordance with 19 CFR 351.226(l)(2), we will direct U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to suspend liquidation and require a cash deposit of estimated duties on unliquidated entries of R-410B, completed in Turkey using China-origin components, that were entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption on or after July 7, 2023, the date of publication of the initiation of this circumvention inquiry in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> CBP shall require cash deposits in accordance with the rate established for the China-wide entity, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> 216.37 percent, <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> for entries of such merchandise produced in Turkey. <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See Initiation Notice,</E> 88 FR at 43275. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See Order,</E> 81 FR at 55438. </FTNT> R-410B produced in Turkey from HFC blends that is not of Chinese-origin is not subject to this inquiry. Therefore, cash deposits are not required for such merchandise under the <E T="03">Order.</E> If an importer imports R-410B from Turkey and claims that it was not produc ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 36k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━