Antidumping Duty Order on Hydrofluorocarbon Blends From the People's Republic of China: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Circumvention With Respect to R-410B, R-407G, and a Certain Custom Blend From the People's Republic of China

<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, R-407G, and a Certain Custom Blend From the People's Republic of China</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 (Commerce) preliminarily determines that imports of R-410B, R-407G, and a custom hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) blend of 50-percent R-125 and 50-percent R-134a (custom HFC blend) which are blended in the People's Republic of China (China) using China-origin HFC components and further processed in the United States, are circumventing the antidumping duty (AD) order on HFC blends from China. Interested parties are invited to comment on this preliminary determination. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable April 11, 2024. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Benjamin Nathan, AD/CVD Operations, Office II, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-3834. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On August 19, 2016, Commerce published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> the AD order on HFC blends from China. <FTREF/> <SU>1</SU> On July 7, 2023, Commerce initiated a country-wide circumvention inquiry to determine whether imports of R-410B, R-407G, and a custom HFC blend which are blended in China using China-origin HFC components 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> pursuant to section 781(a) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act) and 19 CFR 351.226(h). <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> In September 2023, Commerce selected the following two mandatory respondents in this circumvention inquiry: HFC Investments LLC (HFC Investments) and TT International Co., Ltd. (TTI). <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> On November 20, 2023, Commerce extended the deadline for issuing the preliminary determination in this circumvention inquiry until March 1, 2024. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> On February 27, 2024, Commerce further extended the deadline for the preliminary determination until April 5, 2024. <SU>5</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>6</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 September 21, 2023; <E T="03">see also</E> Commerce's Letter, “U.S. Custom Blends Initial Questionnaire,” dated September 21, 2023. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Extension of Preliminary Determination in Circumvention Inquiry,” dated November 20, 2023. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Extension of Preliminary Determination in Circumvention Inquiry,” dated February 27, 2024. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Preliminary Decision Memorandum for the Circumvention Inquiry with Respect to U.S. Custom Blends,” 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>7</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>7</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, R-407G, and a certain custom HFC blend which are blended in China 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 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, Commerce preliminarily determines that R-410B, R-407G, and a certain custom HFC blend which are blended in China using China-origin HFC components and further processed in the United States are 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” sections below for details regarding the use of certifications for inquiry merchandise imported from China. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Suspension of Liquidation</HD> Based on the preliminary affirmative country-wide determination of circumvention for China, in accordance with section 19 CFR 351.226(l)(2), Commerce will direct U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to continue the suspension of liquidation of previously suspended entries and to suspend liquidation and require a cash deposit of estimated duties on unliquidated entries of R-410B, R-407G, and a certain custom HFC blend 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>8</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See Initiation Notice.</E> </FTNT> The blends subject to this inquiry not further processed in the United States are 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, R-407G, and a certain custom HFC blend subject to this inquiry from China and claims that they will not be further processed into subject merchandise in the United States, in order to not be subject to the <E T="03">Order'</E> s cash deposit requirements, the importer is required to meet the certification and documentation requirements described in the “Certifications” and “Certification Requirements” sections below. Where no certification is provided for an entry, and the <E T="03">Order</E> potentially applies to that entry, Commerce intends to instruct CBP to suspend the entry and collect cash deposits: (1) for entries of R-410B, R-407G, and a certain custom HFC blend for which the exporter has a company-specific cash deposit rate under the AD <E T="03">Order,</E> the cash deposit rate will be the company-specific AD cash deposit rate established for that company in the most recently completed segment of the proceeding; (2) for all Chinese exporters of R-410B, R-407G, and a certain custom HFC blend that do not have a company-specific cash deposit rate under the AD <E T="03">Order,</E> the AD cash deposit rate will be the cash deposit rate for the China-wide entity ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> 216.37 percent);  <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> (3) for all non-Chinese exporters of R-410B, R-407G, and a certain custom HFC blend which have not received their own rate, the cash deposit rate will be the rate applicable to the Chinese exporter that supplied that non-Chinese exporter. These suspension of liquidation instructions and cash deposit requirements will remain in effect until further notice. <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>   <E T="03">See Order.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Certified Entries</HD> Entries for which the importer has met the certification requirements described below and in Appendix II to this notice will not be subject to either the suspension of liquidation or the cash deposit requirements described above. Failure to comply with the applicable requisite certification requirements may result in the merchandise being subject to duties. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Certifications</HD> To administer the preliminary affirmative country-wide determination of circumvention, Commerce established importer certifications, which allow companies to certify that specific entries of R-410B, R-407G, and a certain custom HFC blend are not subject to suspension of liquidation or the collection of cash deposits pursuant ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 26k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━