Ferrosilicon From Brazil: Preliminary Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination, Preliminary Affirmative Critical Circumstances Determination in Part, and Alignment of Final Determination With Final Antidumping Duty Determination

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[C-351-861]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Ferrosilicon From Brazil: Preliminary Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination, Preliminary Affirmative Critical Circumstances Determination in Part, and Alignment of Final Determination With 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 ferrosilicon from Brazil. The period of investigation 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 September 10, 2024. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Bob Palmer or Laurel Smalley, 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) 482-9068 or (202) 482-3456, 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 April 24, 2024. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> On May 30, 2024, Commerce postponed the preliminary determination of this investigation until August 26, 2024. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> On July 22, 2024, Commerce tolled certain deadlines in this administrative proceeding by seven days. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The deadline for this preliminary determination is now September 3, 2024. For a complete description of the events that followed the initiation of this investigation, see the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <SU>4</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>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Ferrosilicon from Brazil, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, and the Russian Federation: Initiation of Countervailing Duty Investigations</E> , 89 FR 31133 (April 24, 2024) (Initiation Notice). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See Ferrosilicon from Brazil, Kazakhstan, and Malaysia: Postponement of Preliminary Determinations in the Countervailing Duty Investigations</E> , 89 FR 46860 (May 30, 2024). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Tolling of Deadlines for Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Proceedings,” dated July 22, 2024. Because the current deadline for this preliminary determination falls on a Holiday ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> September 2, 2024), the deadline became the next business day ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> September 3, 2024). <E T="03">See also</E> Next Business Day Rule. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Decision Memorandum for the Preliminary Affirmative Determination in the Countervailing Duty Investigation of Ferrosilicon from Brazil,” 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 ferrosilicon from Brazil. 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/> As noted in the Preliminary Decision Memorandum, Commerce corrected a minor clerical error in the language of the scope. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> <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> Preliminary Decision Memorandum. </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 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>8</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>8</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> Commerce notes that, in making these findings, it relied, in part, on facts available and, because it finds that one or more respondents did not act to the best of their ability to respond to Commerce's requests for information, it drew an adverse inference where appropriate in selecting from among the facts otherwise available. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> For further information, <E T="03">see</E> the “Use of Facts Otherwise Available and Adverse Inferences” section in the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> sections 776(a) and (b) of the Act. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Critical Circumstances, in Part</HD> In accordance with section 703(e)(1) of the Act, Commerce preliminarily determines that critical circumstances exist with respect to imports of Ferrosilicon from Brazil for Companhia de Ferro Ligas da Bahia—FERBASA (Ferbasa), Minasligas S.A. (Minasligas), and Ligas de Aluminio S.A. (LIASA), but do not exist with respect to 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 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 Ferrosilicon from Brazil based on a request made by the petitioners. <SU>10</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 January 14, 2025, unless postponed. <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Petitioners' Letter, “Petitioners' Request for Alignment of Final Determinations with Deadline in Concurrent AD Investigations,” dated August 15, 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 based entirely under section 776 of the Act. In this investigation, Commerce calculated individual estimated countervailable subsidy rates for Ferbasa and Minasligas that are not zero, <E T="03">de minimis,</E> or based entirely on facts otherwise available. Therefore, Commerce calculated the all-others rate using a weighted-average of the estimated subsidy rates calculated for the examined respondents using each company's publicly-ranged U.S. sales values for the merchandise under consideration. <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>  With two respondents under examination, Commerce normally calculates: (A) a weighted-average of the estimated subsidy rates calculated for the examined respondents; (B) a simple average of the estimated subsidy rates calculated for the examined respondents; and (C) a weighted-average of the estimated subsidy rates calculated for the examined respondents using each company's publicly-ranged U.S. sales values for the merchandise under consideration. Commerce then compares (B) and (C) to (A) and selects the rate closest to (A) as the most appropriate rate for all other producers and exporters. <E T="03">See, e.g., Ball Bearings and Parts Thereof from France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom: Final Results of Antidumping Duty Administrative Reviews, Final Results of Changed-Circumstances Review, and Revocation of an Order in Part,</E> 75 FR 53661, 53662 (September 1, 2010), and accompanying Issues and Decision Memorandum at Comment 1. As complete publicly ranged sales data were available, Commerce based the all-others rate on the publicly ranged sales data of the mandatory respondents. For a complete analysis of the data, see the All-Others Rate Calculation Memorandum. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Preliminary Determination</HD> Commerce preliminarily determines that the following estimated countervailable subsidy rates exist: <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,tp0,i1" CDEF="s100,12"> <TTITLE> </TTITL ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━