Dioctyl Terephthalate From Malaysia, Poland, Taiwan, and the Republic of Türkiye: Initiation of Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigations

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-557-827, A-455-808, A-583-875, A-489-852]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Dioctyl Terephthalate From Malaysia, Poland, Taiwan, and the Republic of Türkiye: Initiation of Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigations</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, Department of Commerce. <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable April 15, 2024. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Nathan Araya (Malaysia) at (202) 482-3401; Cameron Cheatham (Poland) at (678) 756-8362; Brian Smith (Taiwan) at (202) 482-1766; and Craig Matney (the Republic of Türkiye (Türkiye)) at (202) 482-2429, AD/CVD Operations, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">The Petitions</HD> On March 26, 2024, the U.S. Department of Commerce (Commerce) received antidumping duty (AD) petitions concerning imports of dioctyl terephthalate (DOTP) filed in proper form on behalf of Eastman Chemical Company (the petitioner). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Petitioner's Letter, “Petitions for the Imposition of Antidumping Duties,” dated March 26, 2024 (the Petitions). </FTNT> Between March 28 and April 4, 2024, Commerce requested supplemental information pertaining to certain aspects of the Petitions in separate supplemental questionnaires. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> The petitioner filed responses to the supplemental questionnaires between April 1 and 8, 2024. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Commerce's Letter, “Supplemental Questions,” dated March 28, 2024 (General Issues Questionnaire); <E T="03">see also</E> Country-Specific AD Supplemental Questionnaires: Malaysia Supplemental, Poland Supplemental, Taiwan Supplemental, and Türkiye Supplemental, dated March 28, 2024 and March 29, 2024; and Memorandum, “Phone Call with Petitioner,” dated April 4, 2024. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Petitioner's Letter, “Response to Request for Clarification,” dated April 1, 2024 (General Issues Supplement); <E T="03">see also</E> Country-Specific AD Supplemental Responses, dated April 1, 2024 and April 3, 2024; and Petitioner's Letter, “Response to Request for Clarification (Turkey),” dated April 8, 2024. </FTNT> In accordance with section 732(b) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act), the petitioner alleges that imports of DOTP from Malaysia, Poland, Taiwan, and Türkiye are being, or are likely to be, sold in the United States at less than fair value (LTFV) within the meaning of section 731 of the Act, and that imports of such products are materially injuring, or threatening material injury to, the DOTP industry in the United States. Consistent with section 732(b)(1) of the Act, 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)(C) of the Act. Commerce also finds that the petitioner demonstrated sufficient industry support for the initiation of the requested LTFV investigations. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> section on “Determination of Industry Support for the Petitions,” <E T="03">infra.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Periods of Investigation</HD> Because the Petitions were filed on March 26, 2024, pursuant to 19 CFR 351.204(b)(1), the period of investigation (POI) for each of these LTFV investigations is January 1, 2023, through December 31, 2023. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Investigations</HD> The product covered by these investigations is DOTP from Malaysia, Poland, Taiwan, and Türkiye. 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 March 28, 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>5</SU> <FTREF/> On April 1, 2024, the petitioner provided clarifications regarding the scope. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> The description of merchandise covered by these investigations, as described in the appendix to this notice, reflects the products for which the domestic industry is seeking relief. <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> General Issues Questionnaire. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> General Issues Supplement at 1-2. </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>7</SU> <FTREF/> Commerce will consider all scope 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, <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> all such factual information should be limited to public information. To facilitate preparation of its questionnaires, Commerce requests that scope comments be submitted by 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) on May 6, 2024, which is the next business day after 20 calendar days from the signature date of this notice. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> Any rebuttal comments, which may include factual information, must be filed by 5:00 p.m. ET on May 16, 2024, which is 10 calendar days from the initial comment deadline. <FTNT> <SU>7</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>8</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 19 CFR 351.102(b)(21) (defining “factual information”). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>  The deadline for scope comments falls on May 5, 2024, which is a Sunday. In accordance with 19 CFR 351.303(b)(1), Commerce will accept comments filed by 5:00 p.m. ET on May 6, 2024 (“For both electronically filed and manually filed documents, if the applicable due date falls on a non-business day, the Secretary will accept documents that are filed on the next business day.”). </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 LTFV 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>10</SU> <FTREF/> An electronically filed document must be received successfully in its entirety by the time and date it is due. <FTNT> <SU>10</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">Comments on Product Characteristics</HD> Commerce is providing interested parties an opportunity to comment on the appropriate physical characteristics of DOTP to be reported in response to Commerce's AD questionnaires. This information will be used to identify the key physical characteristics of the subject merchandise in order to report the relevant cost of production (COP) accurately, as well as to develop appropriate product comparison criteria. Interested parties may provide any information or comments that they feel are relevant to the development of an accurate list of physical characteristics. Specifically, they may provide comments as to which characteristics are appropriate to use as: (1) general product characteristics; and (2) product comparison criteria. We note that it is not always appropriate to use all product characteristics as product comparison criteria. We base product comparison criteria on meaningful commercial differences among products. In other words, although there may be some physical product characteristics utilized by manufacturers to describe DOTP, it may be that only a select few product characteristics take into account commercially meaningful physical characteristics. In addition, interested parties may comment on the order in which the physical characteristics should be used in matching products. Generally, Commerce attempts to list the most important physical characteristics first and the least important characteristics last. In order to consider the suggestions of interested parties in developing and issuing the AD questionnaires, all product characteristics comments must be filed by 5:00 p.m. ET on May 6, 2024, which is the next business day ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 40k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━