Antidumping Duty Order on Hydrofluorocarbon Blends From the People's Republic of China: Final Affirmative Determination of Circumvention With Respect to R-410B, R-407G, and a Certain Custom Blend From the People's Republic of China

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-570-028]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Antidumping Duty Order on Hydrofluorocarbon Blends From the People's Republic of China: Final Affirmative Determination of Circumvention With Respect to R-410B, R-407G, and a Certain Custom Blend From the People's Republic of China</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) determines that imports of R-410B, R-407G, and a custom hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) blend of 50-percent R-125 and 50-percent R-134a (custom HFC blend) which are blended in the People's Republic of China (China) and further processed in the United States, are circumventing the antidumping duty (AD) order on HFC blends from China. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable July 11, 2024. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Benjamin Nathan, AD/CVD Operations, Office II, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-3834. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On August 19, 2016, Commerce published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> the AD order on HFC blends from China. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> On July 7, 2023, Commerce initiated a country-wide circumvention inquiry pursuant to section 781(b) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act), and 19 CFR 351.226(d)(1)(ii) to determine whether imports of R-410B, R-407G, and the custom HFC blend which are blended in China and further processed in the United States, are circumventing the <E T="03">Order</E> and, accordingly, should be covered by the scope of the <E T="03">Order.</E> <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> On April 11, 2024, Commerce published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> its affirmative <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> that imports of R-410B, R-407G, and the custom HFC blend which are blended in China using China-origin components and further processed in the United States are circumventing the <E T="03">Order.</E> <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Hydrofluorocarbon Blends from the People's Republic of China: Antidumping Duty Order,</E> 81 FR 55436 (August 19, 2016) ( <E T="03">Order</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See Hydrofluorocarbon Blends from the People's Republic of China: Initiation of Circumvention Inquiries on the Antidumping Duty Order,</E> 88 FR 43275 (July 7, 2023) ( <E T="03">Initiation Notice</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See Antidumping Duty Order on Hydrofluorocarbon Blends from the People's Republic of China: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Circumvention with Respect to R-410B, R-407G, and a Certain Custom Blend from the People's Republic of China,</E> 89 FR 25568 (April 11, 2024) ( <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> ), and accompanying Preliminary Decision Memorandum (PDM). </FTNT> For a summary of events that occurred since the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination,</E> as well as a full discussion of the issues raised by parties for consideration in this final determination, <E T="03">see</E> the Issues and Decision Memorandum. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> The Issues and 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 Issues and Decision Memorandum can be accessed directly at <E T="03">https://access.trade.gov/public/FRNoticesListLayout.aspx.</E> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Decision Memorandum for the Circumvention Inquiry of the Antidumping Duty Order on Hydrofluorocarbon Blends from the People's Republic of China with Respect to Imports of R-410B and R-407G, and a Certain Custom Blend from the People's Republic of China,” dated concurrently with, and hereby adopted by, this notice (Issues and Decision Memorandum). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Order</HD> The merchandise covered by the <E T="03">Order</E> is certain HFC blends. For a complete description of the scope of the <E T="03">Order, see</E> the Issues and Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Merchandise Subject to the Circumvention Inquiry</HD> This circumvention inquiry covers imports of HFC blends R-410B, R-407G, and a certain custom HFC blend which are blended in China using China-origin HFC components and further processed in the United States (inquiry merchandise). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Methodology</HD> Commerce is conducting this circumvention inquiry in accordance with section 781(a) of the Act, and 19 CFR 351.226. <E T="03">See Preliminary Determination</E> for a full description of the methodology. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> We have continued to apply this methodology, without exception, and incorporate by reference this description of the methodology, for our final determination. <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">See Preliminary Determination</E> PDM at 4-15. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Analysis of Comments Received</HD> All issues raised in this inquiry are addressed in the Issues and Decision Memorandum. A list of the issues raised is attached to this notice in Appendix I. Based on our analysis of the comments received from interested parties, we have not made any changes to the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Final Circumvention Determination</HD> We determine that imports of R-410B, R-407G, and the custom HFC blend which are blended in China using China-origin HFC components and further processed in the United States, would be circumventing the <E T="03">Order</E> whether such imports were by one company, or all companies. Accordingly, we are applying our decision on a country-wide basis. As a result, in accordance with section 781(a) of the Act, we determine that inquiry merchandise should be included within the scope of the <E T="03">Order.</E> For a detailed explanation of our determination with respect to the respondents, <E T="03">see Preliminary Determination,</E> and the Issues and Decision Memorandum. <E T="03">See</E> the “Suspension of Liquidation and Cash Deposit Requirements” section, below, for details regarding suspension of liquidation and cash deposit requirements. <E T="03">See</E> the “Certifications” and “Certification Requirements” sections below for details regarding the use of certifications for inquiry merchandise imported from China. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Suspension of Liquidation and Cash Deposit Requirements</HD> Based on the final affirmative country-wide determination of circumvention for China, in accordance with section 19 CFR 351.226(I)(3)(i)-(ii), Commerce will direct U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to continue the suspension of liquidation of previously suspended entries and to suspend liquidation and require a cash deposit of estimated duties on unliquidated entries of R-410B, R-407G, and a certain custom HFC blend that were entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption on or after July 7, 2023, the date of publication of the initiation of this circumvention inquiry in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See Initiation Notice.</E> </FTNT> The blends subject to this inquiry not further processed in the United States are not subject to this inquiry. Therefore, cash deposits are not required for such merchandise under the <E T="03">Order.</E> If an importer imports R-410B, R-407G, and a certain custom HFC blend subject to this inquiry from China and claims that they will not be further processed into subject merchandise in the United States, in order to not be subject to the <E T="03">Order</E> cash deposit requirements, the importer is required to meet the certification and documentation requirements described in the “Certifications” and “Certification Requirements” sections below. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  The certification language at Appendix II, section E for this final determination reflects a minor modification from the certification included in the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination.</E> </FTNT> Where no certification is provided for an entry, and the <E T="03">Order</E> potentially applies to that entry, Commerce intends to instruct CBP to suspend the entry and collect cash deposits: (1) for entries of R-410B, R-407G, and a certain custom HFC blend for which the exporter has a company-specific cash deposit rate under the AD <E T="03">Order,</E> the cash deposit rate will be the company-specific AD cash deposit rate established for that company in the most recently completed segment of the proceeding; (2) for all Chinese exporters of R-410B, R-407G, and a certain custom HFC blend that do not have a company-specific cash deposit rate under the AD <E T="03">Order,</E> the AD cash deposit rate will be the cash deposit rate for the China-wide entity ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> 216.37 percent);  <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> and (3) for all non-Chinese exporters of R-410B, R-407G, and a certain custom HFC blend which have not received their own rate, the cash deposit rate will be the rate applicable to the Chinese exporter that supplied that non-Chinese exporter. These suspension of liquidation instructions and cash deposit requirements will remain in effect until further notice. <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See Order.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Certified Entries</HD> Entries for whi ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 24k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━