Melamine From India: Preliminary Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination, Preliminary Affirmative Critical Circumstances Determination, and Alignment of Final Determination With the Final Antidumping Duty Determination

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[C-533-925]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Melamine From India: Preliminary Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination, Preliminary Affirmative Critical Circumstances Determination, and Alignment of Final Determination With the Final Antidumping Duty 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 countervailable subsidies are being provided to producers and exporters of melamine from India. The period of investigation (POI) is January 1, 2023, through December 31, 2023. Interested parties are invited to comment on this preliminary determination. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable July 22, 2024. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Paul Kebker or Dylan Hill, AD/CVD Operations, Office IV, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-2254 or (202) 482-1197, respectively. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> This preliminary determination is made in accordance with section 703(b) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act). Commerce published the notice of initiation of this investigation on March 11, 2024. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> On April 18, 2024, Commerce postponed the preliminary determination in this investigation until July 15, 2024. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Melamine from Germany, India, Qatar, and Trinidad and Tobago: Initiation of Countervailing Duty Investigations,</E> 89 FR 17381 (March 11, 2024) ( <E T="03">Initiation Notice</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See Melamine from Germany, India, Qatar, and Trinidad and Tobago: Postponement of Preliminary Determinations in the Countervailing Duty Investigations,</E> 89 FR 27714 (April 18, 2024). </FTNT> For a complete description of the events that followed the initiation of this investigation, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> A list of topics discussed 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>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Decision Memorandum for the Preliminary Affirmative Determination in the Countervailing Duty Investigation of Melamine from India,” dated concurrently with, and hereby adopted by, this notice (Preliminary Decision Memorandum). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Investigation</HD> The product covered by this investigation is melamine from India. 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>4</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>5</SU> <FTREF/> No interested party commented on the scope of the investigation as it appeared in the <E T="03">Initiation Notice.</E> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See Antidumping Duties; Countervailing Duties, Final Rule,</E> 62 FR 27296, 27323 (May 19, 1997). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">See Initiation Notice,</E> 89 FR at 17381-82. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Methodology</HD> Commerce is conducting this investigation in accordance with section 701 of the Act. For each of the subsidy programs found to be countervailable, Commerce preliminarily determines that there is a subsidy, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> a financial contribution by an “authority” that gives rise to a benefit to the recipient, and that the subsidy is specific. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> sections 771(5)(B) and (D) of the Act regarding financial contribution; section 771(5)(E) of the Act regarding benefit; and section 771(5A) of the Act regarding specificity. </FTNT> In making its determination, Commerce relied, in part, on adverse facts available. For further information, <E T="03">see</E> the “Use of Adverse Facts Available” section in the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Critical Circumstances</HD> In accordance with section 703(e)(1) of the Act, Commerce preliminarily determines that critical circumstances exist with respect to U.S. imports of subject merchandise from Gujarat State Fertilizers and Chemicals Limited (Gujarat Fertilizers) and all other exporters or producers not individually examined. For a full description of the methodology and results of Commerce's analysis, <E T="03">see</E> the “Preliminary Determination of Critical Circumstances” section in the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Alignment</HD> As noted in the Preliminary Decision Memorandum, in accordance with section 705(a)(1) of the Act and 19 CFR 351.210(b)(4), Commerce is aligning the final countervailing duty (CVD) determination in this investigation with the final determination in the companion antidumping duty (AD) investigation of melamine from India based on a request made by the petitioner. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> Consequently, the final CVD determination will be issued on the same date as the final AD determination, which is currently scheduled to be issued no later than November 25, 2024, unless postponed. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Petitioner's Letter, “Petitioner's Request to Align Countervailing Duty Investigation Final Determination with Antidumping Duty Investigation Final Determination,” dated June 11, 2024. The petitioner is Cornerstone Chemical Company. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See Melamine From Germany, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Qatar, and Trinidad and Tobago: Postponement of Preliminary Determinations in the Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigations,</E> 89 FR 52437 (June 24, 2024). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">All-Others Rate</HD> Sections 703(d) and 705(c)(5)(A) of the Act provide that in the preliminary determination, Commerce shall determine an estimated all-others rate for companies not individually examined. This rate shall be an amount equal to the weighted average of the estimated subsidy rates established for those companies individually examined, excluding any zero and <E T="03">de minimis</E> rates and any rates determined entirely under section 776 of the Act. In this investigation, Commerce calculated an individual estimated countervailable subsidy rate for Gujarat Fertilizers, the only individually examined exporter/producer in this investigation. Because the only individually calculated rate is not zero, <E T="03">de minimis,</E> or determined entirely under section 776 of the Act, we have assigned the rate calculated for Gujarat Fertilizers to all other producers and exporters, pursuant to section 705(c)(5)(A)(i) of the Act. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Preliminary Determination</HD> Commerce preliminarily determines that the following estimated countervailable subsidy rates exists: <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,tp0,i1" CDEF="s100,12"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Company</CHED> <CHED H="1"> Subsidy rate (percent <E T="03">ad valorem</E> <ENT I="01">Gujarat State Fertilizers and Chemicals Limited</ENT> <ENT>17.09</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">All Others</ENT> <ENT>17.09</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Suspension of Liquidation</HD> In accordance with section 703(d)(1)(B) and (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 to this notice entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption on or after the date described below. Further, pursuant to 19 CFR 351.205(d), Commerce will instruct CBP to require a cash deposit equal to the rate indicated in the table above. Section 703(e)(2) of the Act provides that, given an affirmative determination of critical circumstances, any suspension of liquidation shall apply to unliquidated entries of subject merchandise entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption on or after the later of: (a) the date which is 90 days before the date on which the suspension of liquidation was first ordered; or (b) the date on which notice of initiation of the investigation was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . As noted above, Commerce preliminarily finds that critical circumstances exist for imports of subject merchandise produced and/or exported by Gujarat Fertilizers and all other producers and/or exporters not individually examined. In accordance with section 703(e)(2)(A) of the Act, suspension of liquidation shall apply to unliquidated entries of subject merchandise from the exporters/producers identified in this paragraph that were entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption on or after the date which is 90 days before the publication of this notice in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . <HD SOURCE="HD1">Disclosure</HD> Commerce intends to disclose its calculations and analysis ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 17k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━