Certain High Chrome Cast Iron Grinding Media From India: Initiation of Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigation

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-533-930]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Certain High Chrome Cast Iron Grinding Media 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 16, 2024. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Charles DeFilippo, AD/CVD Operations, Office VII, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-3797. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">The Petition</HD> On April 26, 2024, the U.S. Department of Commerce (Commerce) received an antidumping duty (AD) petition concerning imports of certain high chrome cast iron grinding media (grinding media) from India, filed in proper form on behalf of Magotteaux Inc (the petitioner), a domestic producer of grinding media. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The Petition was accompanied by a countervailing duty (CVD) petition concerning imports of grinding media 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,” dated April 26, 2024 (Petition). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> Between April 30 and May 9, 2024, Commerce requested information pertaining to certain aspects of the Petition in supplemental questionnaires. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The petitioner filed an amendment to the proposed scope on May 8, 2024, and responded to Commerce's supplemental questionnaires between May 2 and 10, 2024. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Commerce's Letters, “Supplemental Questions,” dated May 2, 2024 (General Issues Questionnaire); and “Supplemental Questions,” dated May 2, 2024; <E T="03">see also</E> Memorandum, “Phone Call with Counsel to Petitioner,” dated May 9, 2024. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Petitioner's Letters, “Response to Supplemental Questions (General Issues),” dated May 2, 2024 (General Issues Supplement); “Response to Supplemental Questions (Antidumping),” dated May 2, 2024; “Scope Amendment,” dated May 8, 2024 (Scope Amendment); and “Response to Second Supplemental Questions (Antidumping),” dated May 10, 2024. </FTNT> In accordance with section 732(b) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act), the petitioner alleges that imports of grinding media 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 grinding media 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)(C) of the Act. Commerce also finds that the petitioner demonstrated sufficient industry support for the initiation of the requested LTFV investigation. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>5</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 26, 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 products covered by this investigation are grinding media 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> On April 30, 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>6</SU> <FTREF/> On May 2 and 8, 2024, the petitioner provided clarifications and/or revised the scope. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> The description of merchandise covered by this investigation, as described in the appendix to this notice, reflects these clarifications. <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> General Issues Questionnaire. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Scope Amendment at 1-2; <E T="03">see also</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>8</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>9</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 June 5, 2024, which is 20 calendar days from the signature date of this notice. <SU>10</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 17, 2024, which is the next business day after 10 calendar days from the initial comment deadline. <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>8</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>9</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 19 CFR 351.102(b)(21) (defining “factual information”). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 19 CFR 351.303(b)(1). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>  The deadline for rebuttal comments falls on June 15, 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 17, 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>12</SU> <FTREF/> An electronically filed document must be received successfully in its entirety by the time and date it is due. <FTNT> <SU>12</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 grinding media 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 grinding media, 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 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 35k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━