Frozen Warmwater Shrimp From Ecuador: Final Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[C-331-806]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Frozen Warmwater Shrimp From Ecuador: Final Affirmative Countervailing 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) determines that countervailable subsidies are being provided to producers and exporters of frozen warmwater shrimp (shrimp) from Ecuador. The period of investigation (POI) is January 1, 2022, through December 31, 2022. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable October 28, 2024. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Reginald Anadio or Zachary Shaykin, 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) 482-3166 or (202) 482-5377, respectively. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On April 1, 2024, Commerce published its <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> and invited interested parties to comment. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> In the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> , and in accordance with section 705(a)(1) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act), and 19 CFR 351.210(b)(4), Commerce aligned this final countervailing duty (CVD) determination with the final antidumping duty (AD) determination of frozen warmwater shrimp from Ecuador. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> On July 12 and September 26, 2024, Commerce issued its post-preliminary determinations. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> On July 22, 2024, Commerce tolled certain deadlines in this administrative proceeding by seven days. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> The deadline for the final determination is now October 21, 2024. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Frozen Warmwater Shrimp from Ecuador: Preliminary Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination, and Alignment of Final Determination with the Final Antidumping Duty Determination,</E> 89 FR 22379 (April 1, 2024) ( <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> ), amended in <E T="03">Frozen Warmwater Shrimp from Ecuador: Amended Preliminary Determination of Countervailing Duty Investigation,</E> 89 FR 31722 (April 25, 2024) ( <E T="03">Amended Preliminary Determination</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">Id.,</E> 89 FR at 22380. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memoranda, “Countervailing Duty Investigation of Frozen Warmwater Shrimp from Ecuador: Post-Preliminary Analysis,” dated July 12, 2024 (First Post-Preliminary Determination); and “Countervailing Duty Investigation of Frozen Warmwater Shrimp from Ecuador: Second Post-Preliminary Determination Calculations for Sociedad Nacional de Galapagos C.A.,” dated September 26, 2024 (Second Post-Preliminary Determination). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Tolling of Deadlines for Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Proceedings,” dated July 22, 2024. </FTNT> For a complete description of the events that followed the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> , see the Issues and Decision Memorandum. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> The Issues and Decision Memorandum is a public document and is made available to the public via Enforcement and Compliance's Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Centralized Electronic Service System (ACCESS). ACCESS is available to registered users at <E T="03">http://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>5</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Issues and Decision Memorandum for the Final Affirmative Determination of the Countervailing Duty Investigation of Frozen Warmwater Shrimp from Ecuador,” dated concurrently with, and hereby adopted by, this notice (Issues and Decision Memorandum). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Investigation</HD> The product covered by this investigation is frozen freshwater shrimp from Ecuador. For a complete description of this investigation, <E T="03">see</E> Appendix I. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope Comments</HD> We received no comments from interested parties on the scope of the investigation as it appeared in the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> . Therefore, we made no changes to the scope of the investigation. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Verification</HD> As provided in section 782(i)(1) of the Act, in July 2024, Commerce conducted verification of the subsidy information reported by Industrial Pesquera Santa Priscila S.A. (Santa Priscila), Sociedad Nacional de Galápagos C.A. (SONGA), and the Government of Ecuador (GOE) for use in our final determination. We used standard verification procedures, including an examination of relevant accounting records and original source documents provided by Santa Priscila, SONGA, and the GOE. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memoranda, “Countervailing Duty Investigation of Frozen Warmwater Shrimp from Ecuador: Verification of the Questionnaire Responses of Sociedad Nacional de Galápagos C.A.,” dated August 13, 2024; “Countervailing Duty Investigation of Frozen Warmwater Shrimp from Ecuador: Verification of the Questionnaire Responses of Industrial Pesquera Santa Priscila S.A.,” dated August 22, 2024; and “Countervailing Duty Investigation of Frozen Warmwater Shrimp from Ecuador: Verification of the Questionnaire Responses of the Government of Ecuador,” dated September 3, 2024. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Analysis of Subsidy Programs and Comments Received</HD> The subsidy programs under investigation, and the issues raised in the case and rebuttal briefs that were submitted by interested parties in this investigation are discussed in the Issues and Decision Memorandum. For a list of the issues raised by interested parties and addressed in the Issues and Decision Memorandum, <E T="03">see</E> Appendix II. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Methodology</HD> Commerce conducted this investigation in accordance with section 701 of the Act. For each of the subsidy programs found to be countervailable, Commerce 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>7</SU> <FTREF/> For a full description of the methodology underlying our final determination, see the Issues and Decision Memorandum. <FTNT> <SU>7</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 this final determination, Commerce relied, in part, on facts otherwise available, including with an adverse inference, pursuant to sections 776(a) and (b) of the Act. For a full discussion of our application of adverse facts available (AFA), see the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> , <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> First Post-Preliminary Determination and Second Post-Preliminary Determination, <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> and the Issues and Decision Memorandum section entitled “Use of Facts Otherwise Available and Application of Adverse Inferences.” <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See Preliminary Determination</E> and <E T="03">Amended Preliminary Determination</E> . </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> First Post-Preliminary Determination and Second Post-Preliminary Determination. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Changes Since the Preliminary Determination</HD> Based on our review and analysis of the information at verification and comments received from interested parties, we made certain changes to the subsidy rate calculations for both Santa Priscila and SONGA. <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> For a discussion of these changes, see the Issues and Decision Memorandum. <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Final Determination Calculations for Santa Priscila,” dated concurrently with this notice, and Memorandum, “Final Determination Calculations for SONGA,” dated concurrently with this notice. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">All-Others Rate</HD> In accordance with section 705(c)(1)(B)(i) of the Act, we calculated an individual estimated countervailable subsidy rates for the mandatory respondents, Santa Priscila and SONGA. Section 705(c)(5)(A)(i) of the Act states that, for companies not individually investigated, Commerce will determine an all-others rate equal to the weighted-average countervailable subsidy rates established for exporters and/or producers individually investigated, excluding any subsidy rates that are zero, <E T="03">de minimis,</E> or determined entirely under section 776 of the Act. In this investigation, we calculated individual total net countervailable subsidy rates for both Santa Priscila and SONGA that are not zero, <E T="03">de minimis,</E> or based entirely on facts otherwise available. Therefore, we calculated the all-others rate using a weighted average of the individual estimated subsidy rates calculated for the examined respondents (Santa Priscila and SONGA) using each company's publicly-ranged sales value for their exports to the United States of subject merchandise, <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> in accordance with section 705(c)(5)(A)(i) of the Act. <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 calculat ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━