Certain High Chrome Cast Iron Grinding Media From India: Initiation of Countervailing Duty Investigation

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[C-533-931]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Certain High Chrome Cast Iron Grinding Media From India: Initiation of Countervailing Duty 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> Claudia Cott, AD/CVD Operations, Office I, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-4270. </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 a countervailing duty (CVD) 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), <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> a domestic producer of grinding media. The CVD petition was accompanied by an antidumping duty (AD) 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 on Certain High Chrome Cast Iron Grinding Media from India,” dated April 26, 2024 (Petition). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> On April 30, 2024, Commerce requested supplemental information pertaining to certain aspects of the Petition. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> On May 2, 2024, the petitioner filed responses to these requests for additional information, and on May 8, 2024, the petitioner filed an amendment to the proposed scope. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Commerce's Letters, “Supplemental Questions,” dated April 30, 2024 (General Issues Questionnaire); and “Supplemental Questions,” dated April 30, 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 (Countervailing),” dated May 2, 2024; and “Scope Amendment,” dated May 8, 2024 (Scope Amendment). </FTNT> In accordance with section 702(b)(1) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act), the petitioner alleges that the Government of India (GOI) is providing countervailable subsidies, within the meaning of sections 701 and 771(5) of the Act, to producers of grinding media from India, and that such imports are materially injuring, or threatening material injury to, the domestic industry producing grinding media in the United States. Consistent with section 702(b)(1) of the Act and 19 CFR 351.202(b), for those alleged programs on which we are initiating a CVD investigation, the Petition is supported 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 with respect to the initiation of the requested CVD 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, the period of investigation (POI) is January 1, 2023, through December 31, 2023. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 19 CFR 351.204(b)(2). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Investigation</HD> The merchandise 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 Scope of the Investigation</HD> On April 30, 2024, Commerce requested information 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/> On May 2 and 8, 2024, the petitioner provided clarifications and/or revised the scope language. <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. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> General Issues Supplement at 1-2; <E T="03">see also</E> Scope Amendment. </FTNT> As discussed in the <E T="03">Preamble</E> to Commerce's regulations, we are setting aside a period for 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 determinations. If scope comments include factual information, all such factual information should be limited to public information. <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> 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. Any rebuttal comments, which may include factual information, must be filed by 5:00 p.m. ET on June 17, 2024, <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> which is the next business day after 10 calendar days from the initial comment deadline. <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>   <E T="03">See Antidumping Duties; Countervailing Duties,</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>  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 the parties consider relevant to the scope of the investigation be submitted during that time period. However, if a party subsequently finds that additional factual information pertaining to the scope of the investigation may be relevant, the party may contact Commerce and request permission to submit the additional information. All scope comments must also be filed on the record of the concurrent AD investigation. <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">Consultations</HD> Pursuant to sections 702(b)(4)(A)(i) and (ii) of the Act, Commerce notified the GOI of the receipt of the Petition and provided an opportunity for consultations with respect to the Petition. <SU>13</SU> <FTREF/> The GOI did not request consultations. <FTNT> <SU>13</SU>   <E T="03"> See</E> Commerce's Letter, “Countervailing Duty Petition on High Chrome Cast Iron Grinding Media from India: Invitation for Consultation,” dated April 30, 2024. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Determination of Industry Support for the Petition</HD> Section 702(b)(1) of the Act requires that a petition be filed on behalf of the domestic industry. Section 702(c)(4)(A) of the Act provides that a petition meets this requirement if the domestic producers or workers who support the petition account for: (i) at least 25 percent of the total production of the domestic like product; and (ii) more than 50 percent of the production of the domestic like product produced by that portion of the industry expressing support for, or opposition to, the petition. Moreover, section 702(c)(4)(D) of the Act provides that, if the petition does not establish support of domestic producers or workers accounting for more than 50 percent of the total production of the domestic like product, Commerce shall: (i) poll the industry or rely on other information in order to determine if there is support for the petition, as required by subparagraph (A); or (ii) determine industry support using a statistically valid sampling method to poll the “industry.” Section 771(4)(A) of the Act defines the “industry” as the producers as a whole of a domestic like product. Thus, to determine whether a petition has the requisite industry ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 29k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━