Crystalline Silicon Photovoltaic Cells, Whether or Not Assembled Into Modules, From Malaysia: Preliminary Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination and Alignment of Final Determination With Final Antidumping Duty Determination

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[C-557-831]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Crystalline Silicon Photovoltaic Cells, Whether or Not Assembled Into Modules, From Malaysia: Preliminary Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination 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 crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells, whether or not assembled into modules (solar cells), from Malaysia. 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 October 15, 2024. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Preston Cox or Scarlet Jaldin, AD/CVD Operations, Office VI, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-5041 or (202) 482-4275, 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 May 20, 2024. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> On July 3, 2024, Commerce postponed the preliminary determination of this investigation until September 23, 2024. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> On July 22, 2024, Commerce tolled certain deadlines in this administrative proceeding by seven days. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Crystalline Silicon Photovoltaic Cells, Whether or Not Assembled into Modules, from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Initiation of Countervailing Duty Investigations,</E> 89 FR 43816 (May 20, 2024) ( <E T="03">Initiation Notice</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See Crystalline Silicon Photovoltaic Cells, Whether or Not Assembled into Modules, from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Postponement of Preliminary Determinations in the Countervailing Duty Investigations,</E> 89 FR 55231 (July 3, 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. </FTNT> The deadline for the preliminary determination is now September 30, 2024. For a complete description of the events that followed the initiation of this investigation, <E T="03">see</E> 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>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Decision Memorandum for the Preliminary Affirmative Determination in the Countervailing Duty Investigation of Crystalline Silicon Photovoltaic Cells, Whether or Not Assembled into Modules, from Malaysia,” 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 solar cells from Malaysia. 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 <E T="03">Preamble</E> 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/> We received several comments concerning the scope of this investigation, as well as in the companion less-than-fair-value (LTFV) and countervailing duty (CVD) investigations of solar cells, as it appeared in the <E T="03">Initiation Notice.</E> We are currently evaluating the scope comments filed by interested parties. We intend to issue our preliminary decision regarding the scope of the LTFV and CVD investigations in the preliminary determinations of the companion LTFV investigations, the deadline for which is November 27, 2024. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> We will incorporate the scope decisions from the LTFV investigations into the scope of the final CVD determination for this investigation after considering any relevant comments submitted in scope case and rebuttal briefs. <SU>8</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 Crystalline Silicon Photovoltaic Cells, Whether or Not Assembled Into Modules, from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Postponement of Preliminary Determinations in the Less-Than Fair-Value Investigations,</E> 89 FR 77473 (September 23, 2024) ( <E T="03">LTFV Preliminary Postponement</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>  The deadline for interested parties to submit scope case and rebuttal briefs will be established in the preliminary scope 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>9</SU> <FTREF/> For a full description of the methodology underlying our preliminary determination, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <FTNT> <SU>9</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 these findings, Commerce 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>10</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>10</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> sections 776(a) and (b) of the Act. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Alignment</HD> In accordance with section 705(a)(1) of the Act and 19 CFR 351.210(b)(4), Commerce is aligning the final determination in this investigation with the final determination in the companion LTFV investigation of solar cells from Malaysia based on a request made by the petitioner. <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> Consequently, the final CVD determination will be issued on the same date as the final LTFV determination, which is currently scheduled to be issued no later than February 10, 2025. <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Petitioner's Letter, “Request to Align Countervailing Duty Investigation Final Determinations with Antidumping Duty Investigation Final Determinations,” dated September 23, 2024. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>12</SU>   <E T="03">See LTFV Preliminary Postponement.</E> </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 Hanwha Q CELLS Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. (Hanwha Q CELLS) and Jinko Solar Technology Sdn Bhd (Jinko Solar) that are not zero, <E T="03">de minimis,</E> or based entirely on facts otherwise available. However, because publicly ranged sales values for all mandatory respondents are not on the record of this investigation, for the preliminary determination, we are unable to weight average the subsidy rates of Hanwha Q CELLS and Jinko Solar derive an estimated all-others rate for companies not individually examined. Therefore, we calculated a simple average of the subsidy rates calculated for Hanwha Q CELLS and Jinko Solar for application to the all-others rate. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Rate for Non-Responsive Companies</HD> Three exporters and/or producers of solar cells from Malaysia (Baojia New Energy, Pax Union Resources SDN BHD, and SunMax Energy SDN BHD, collectively, the non-responsive companies) did not respond to Commerce's quantity and value (Q&V) questionnaire. We find that, by not responding to the Q&V questionnaire, these companies withheld ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 27k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━