Truck and Bus Tires From Thailand: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value, Preliminary Negative Determination of Critical Circumstances, and Postponement of Final Determination

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-549-848]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Truck and Bus Tires From Thailand: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value, Preliminary Negative Determination of Critical Circumstances, and Postponement of Final Determination</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 truck and bus tires from Thailand are being, or are likely to be, sold in the United States at less than fair value (LTFV). The period of investigation (POI) is October 1, 2022, through September 30, 2023. Interested parties are invited to comment on this preliminary determination. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable May 20, 2024. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Faris Montgomery or Jonathan Schueler, AD/CVD Operations, Office VIII, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-1537 or (202) 482-9175, respectively. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> This preliminary determination is made in accordance with section 733(b) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act). Commerce published the notice of initiation of this investigation on November 14, 2023. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> On December 4, 2023, we selected Bridgestone Corporation (Bridgestone) and Prinx Chengshan Tire (Thailand) Co., Ltd. (Prinx) as mandatory respondents in this investigation. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> On February 8, 2024, Commerce postponed the preliminary determination of this investigation until May 14, 2024. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> For a complete description of the events that followed the initiation of this investigation, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> A list of topics included in the Preliminary Decision Memorandum is included as Appendix II 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> . <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Truck and Bus Tires from Thailand: Initiation of Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigation,</E> 88 FR 77960 (November 14, 2023) ( <E T="03">Initiation Notice</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Respondent Selection,” dated December 4, 2023. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See Truck and Bus Tires from Thailand: Postponement of Preliminary Determination in the Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigation,</E> 89 FR 8649 (February 8, 2024). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Decision Memorandum for the Preliminary Determination in the Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigation of Truck and Bus Tires from Thailand,” dated concurrently with, and hereby adopted by, this notice (Preliminary Decision Memorandum). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Investigation</HD> The products covered by this investigation are truck and bus tires from Thailand. For a complete description of the scope of this investigation, <E T="03">see</E> Appendix I. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope Comments</HD> In accordance with the preamble to Commerce's regulations, <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> the <E T="03">Initiation Notice</E> set aside a period of time for parties to raise issues regarding product coverage ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> scope). <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> Certain interested parties commented on the scope of the investigation as it appeared in the <E T="03">Initiation Notice</E> . For a summary of the product coverage comments and rebuttal responses submitted to the record for this preliminary determination, and accompanying discussion and analysis of all comments timely received, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Scope Decision Memorandum. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> Commerce is not preliminarily modifying the scope language as it appeared in the <E T="03">Initiation Notice</E> . <E T="03">See</E> the scope in Appendix I to this notice. <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">See Antidumping Duties; Countervailing Duties, Final Rule,</E> 62 FR 27296, 27323 (May 19, 1997). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See Initiation Notice</E> . </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Scope Comments Decision Memorandum for the Preliminary Determination,” dated concurrently with this notice (Preliminary Scope Decision Memorandum). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Methodology</HD> Commerce is conducting this investigation in accordance with section 731 of the Act. Commerce has calculated export prices in accordance with section 772(a) of the Act. Constructed export prices have been calculated in accordance with section 772(b) of the Act. Normal value is calculated in accordance with section 773 of the Act. For a full description of the methodology underlying the preliminary determination, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Preliminary Negative Determination of Critical Circumstances</HD> In accordance with section 733(e) of the Act and 19 CFR 351.206, Commerce preliminarily finds that critical circumstances do not exist for Prinx, Bridgestone, and all other exporters and producers of the subject merchandise. For a full description of the methodology and results of Commerce's critical circumstances analysis, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">All-Others Rate</HD> Sections 733(d)(1)(ii) and 735(c)(5)(A) of the Act provide that in the preliminary determination Commerce shall determine an estimated all-others rate for all exporters and producers not individually examined. This rate shall be an amount equal to the weighted average of the estimated weighted-average dumping margins established for exporters and producers individually investigated, excluding any zero and <E T="03">de minimis</E> margins, and any margins determined entirely under section 776 of the Act. In this investigation, Commerce preliminarily calculated a zero rate for Prinx. Therefore, the only rate that is not zero, <E T="03">de minimis</E> or based entirely on facts otherwise available is the rate calculated for Bridgestone. Consequently, the preliminary rate calculated for Bridgestone is also the preliminary rate assigned to all other producers and exporters. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Preliminary Determination</HD> Commerce preliminarily determines that the following estimated weighted-average dumping margins exist: <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,tp0,i1" CDEF="s100,12"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Exporter/producer</CHED> <ENT I="01">Bridgestone Corporation</ENT> <ENT>2.35</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Prinx Chengshan Tire (Thailand) Co., Ltd.</ENT> <ENT>0.00</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">All Others</ENT> <ENT>2.35</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> Consistent with section 733(b)(3) of the Act, Commerce disregards <E T="03">de minimis</E> rates and preliminarily determines that individually examined respondents with <E T="03">de minimis</E> rates have not made sales of subject merchandise at LTFV. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Suspension of Liquidation</HD> In accordance with section 733(d)(2) of the Act, Commerce will direct U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to suspend liquidation of entries of subject merchandise, as described in Appendix I, entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption on or after the date of publication of this notice in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . Further, pursuant to section 733(d)(1)(B) of the Act and 19 CFR 351.205(d), Commerce will instruct CBP to require a cash deposit equal to the estimated weighted-average dumping margin or the estimated all-others rate, as follows: (1) the cash deposit rate for the respondents listed above will be equal to the company-specific estimated weighted-average dumping margins determined in this preliminary determination; (2) if the exporter is not a respondent identified above, but the producer is, then the cash deposit rate will be equal to the company-specific estimated weighted-average dumping margin established for that producer of the subject merchandise except as explained below; and (3) the cash deposit rate for all other producers and exporters will be equal to the all-others estimated weighted-average dumping margin. Because the estimated weighted-average dumping margin for Prinx is zero percent, entries of shipments of subject merchandise from this company will not be subject to suspension of liquidation or cash deposit requirements. In such situations, Commerce applies the exclusion to the provisional measures to the producer/exporter combination that was examined in the investigation. Accordingly, Commerce is directing CBP not to suspend liquidation of entries of subject merchandise from Prinx. Entries of shipments of subject merchandise from this company in any other producer/exporter combination, or by third parties that sourced subject merchandise from the excluded producer/exporter combination, are subject to the provisional measures at the all others rate. Should the final estimated weighted-average dumping margin be zero or <E T="03">de minimis</E> for the producer/exporter combinations identified above, entries of shipments of ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━