Ceramic Tile From India: Initiation of Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigation

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-533-928]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Ceramic Tile From India: Initiation of Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigation</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, Department of Commerce. <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable May 9, 2024. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Fred Baker, AD/CVD Operations, Office VI, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-2924. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">The Petition</HD> On April 19, 2024, the U.S. Department of Commerce (Commerce) received an antidumping duty (AD) petition concerning imports of ceramic tile from India, filed in proper form on behalf of the Coalition for Fair Trade in Ceramic Tile (the petitioner). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The Petition was accompanied by a countervailing duty (CVD) petition concerning imports of ceramic tile from India. <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: Ceramic Tile from India,” dated April 19, 2024 (Petition). The members of the Coalition for Fair Trade in Ceramic Tile are Crossville, Inc.; Dal-Tile Corporation; Del Conca USA, Inc.; Wonder Porcelain; Landmark Ceramics—UST, Inc.; Florim USA; Florida Tile; Portobello America Manufacturing LLC; and StonePeak Ceramics Inc. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> Between April 23 and May 6, 2024, Commerce requested information pertaining to certain aspects of the Petition in supplemental questionnaires. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The petitioner responded to Commerce's supplemental questionnaires between April 26 and May 7, 2024. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Commerce's Letters, “Supplemental Questions,” dated April 23, 2024 (General Issues Questionnaire); “Supplemental Questions,” dated April 23, 2024; Memoranda, “Phone Call with Counsel to Petitioner,” dated April 30, 2024 (April 30 Memorandum); “Phone Call with Counsel to Petitioner,” dated May 1, 2024 (May 1 Memorandum); “Phone Call with Counsel to Petitioner,” dated May 3, 2024; and “Phone Call with Counsel to Petitioner,” dated May 6, 2024. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Petitioner's Letters, “Petitioner's First Supplemental General Issues Questionnaire Response,” dated April 26, 2024 (First General Issues Supplement); “Petitioner's First Supplemental Antidumping Questionnaire Responses,” dated April 29, 2024; “Petitioner's Second Supplemental Questionnaire Response Concerning General Issues and AD Petition,” dated May 2, 2024 (Second Petition Supplement); “Petitioner's Second Supplemental Questionnaire Response Concerning General Issues and AD Petition; Second Set of Responses,” dated May 3, 2024 (Third Petition Supplement); “Petitioner's Third Supplemental Questionnaire Response Concerning General Issues and AD Petition,” dated May 6, 2024; and, “Petitioner's Revised Data for the Antidumping Margin and Constructed Value Calculation,” dated May 7, 2024. </FTNT> In accordance with section 732(b) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act), the petitioner alleges that imports of ceramic tile from India, 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 ceramic tile industry in the United States. Consistent with section 732(b)(1) of the Act, the Petition was accompanied by information reasonably available to the petitioner supporting its allegations. Commerce finds that the petitioner filed the Petition 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 LTFV investigation. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  The members of the petitioning coalition are interested parties under section 771(9)(C) of the Act. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> section on “Determination of Industry Support for the Petition,” <E T="03">infra.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Period of Investigation</HD> Because the Petition was filed on April 19, 2024, pursuant to 19 CFR 351.204(b)(1), the period of investigation (POI) is April 1, 2023, through March 31, 2024. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Investigation</HD> The product covered by this investigation is ceramic tile from India. For a full description of the scope of this investigation, <E T="03">see</E> the appendix to this notice. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments on the Scope of the Investigation</HD> Between April 23 and May 1, 2024, Commerce requested information and clarification from the petitioner regarding the proposed scope to ensure that the scope language in the Petition is an accurate reflection of the products for which the domestic industry is seeking relief. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> Between April 26 and May 3, 2024, the petitioner provided clarifications and revised the scope. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> The description of merchandise covered by this investigation, as described in the appendix to this notice, reflects these clarifications. <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> General Issues Questionnaire; <E T="03">see also</E> April 30 Memorandum; and May 1 Memorandum. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> First General Issues Supplement at 1-2 and Supplemental Exhibit I-66; <E T="03">see also</E> Second Petition Supplement at 2-3 and Supplemental Exhibit I-70; Third Petition Supplement at 4. </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>9</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 determination. If scope comments include factual information, <SU>10</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 29, 2024, which is 20 calendar days from the signature date of this notice. <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> Any rebuttal comments, which may include factual information, and should also be limited to public information, must be filed by 5:00 p.m. ET on June 10, 2024, which is the next business day after 10 calendar days from the initial comment deadline. <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>9</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>10</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 19 CFR 351.102(b)(21) (defining “factual information”). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 19 CFR 351.303(b)(1). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>12</SU>  The deadline for rebuttal comments falls on June 8, 2024, which is a Saturday. In accordance with 19 CFR 351.303(b)(1), Commerce will accept rebuttal comments filed by 5:00 p.m. ET on June 10, 2024. <E T="03">Id.</E> (“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 this investigation be submitted during that period. However, if a party subsequently finds that additional factual information pertaining to the scope of the investigation 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 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">Comments on Product Characteristics</HD> Commerce is providing interested parties an opportunity to comment on the appropriate physical characteristics of ceramic tile 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 appropria ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 41k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━