Certain Epoxy Resins From the People's Republic of China: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value and Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Critical Circumstances

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-570-166]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Certain Epoxy Resins From the People's Republic of China: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value and Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Critical Circumstances</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 certain epoxy resins (epoxy resins) from the People's Republic of China (China) are being, or are likely to be, sold in the United States at less than fair value (LTFV). The period of investigation (POI) is October 1, 2023, through March 31, 2024. Interested parties are invited to comment on this preliminary determination. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable November 13, 2024. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Mark Flessner, AD/CVD Operations, Office VI, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: 202-482-6312. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> This preliminary determination is made in accordance with section 733(b) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act). Commerce published the notice of initiation of this LTFV investigation on April 23, 2024. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Certain Epoxy Resins from the People's Republic of China, India, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand: Initiation of Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigations,</E> 89 FR 33324 (April 29, 2024) ( <E T="03">Initiation Notice</E> ). </FTNT> On July 22, 2024, Commerce tolled certain deadlines in this administrative proceeding by seven days. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> On August 12, 2024, Commerce postponed the preliminary determination of this investigation until November 6, 2024. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Tolling of Deadlines for Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Proceedings,” dated July 22, 2024. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See Certain Epoxy Resins from the People's Republic of China, India, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand: Postponement of Preliminary Determinations of Antidumping Duty Investigations,</E> 89 FR 65583 (August 12, 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>4</SU> <FTREF/> A list of topics included 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 Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigation of Certain Epoxy Resins from the People's Republic of China,” dated concurrently with, and hereby adopted by, this notice (Preliminary Decision Memorandum). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Investigation</HD> The products covered by this investigation are epoxy resins from China. 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/> Certain interested parties commented on the scope of the investigation as it appeared in the <E T="03">Initiation Notice,</E> as well as additional language proposed by Commerce. For a summary of the product coverage comments and rebuttal responses submitted to the record for this preliminary determination, and accompanying discussion and analysis of all comments timely received, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Scope Decision Memorandum. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> Commerce is not preliminarily modifying the scope language as it appeared in the <E T="03">Initiation Notice. See</E> the scope in Appendix I to this notice. Pursuant to 19 CFR 351.309(c)(2), interested parties may submit additional comments on the scope of this investigation in scope case briefs, which may be submitted no later than 30 days after the issuance of the Preliminary Scope Decision Memorandum. <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) ( <E T="03">Preamble</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See Initiation Notice,</E> 89 FR at 33324-25. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Less-Than-Fair-Value and Countervailing Duty Investigations of Certain Epoxy Resins from the People's Republic of China, India, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand: Preliminary Scope Decision Memorandum,” dated concurrently with this preliminary determination (Preliminary Scope Decision Memorandum). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Methodology</HD> Commerce is conducting this investigation in accordance with section 731 of the Act. Commerce has calculated export prices in accordance with 772(a) of the Act. Because China is a non-market economy, within the meaning of section 771(18) of the Act, Commerce has calculated normal value in accordance with section 773(c) of the Act. Furthermore, pursuant to sections 776(a) and (b) of the Act, Commerce has preliminarily relied upon facts otherwise available, with adverse inferences, for the China-wide entity, which includes (1) Huntsman Advanced Materials (Guangdong) Company Ltd.; (2) Artmate Co. Ltd.; (3) Changzhou Original Chemical Co., Ltd.; (4) Jiangsu Ruiheng New Material Technology Co., Ltd.; (5) Jiangsu Sanmu Group Co., Ltd.; (6) Jushi Group Company Ltd.; (7) Mercury Far East Enterprise Ltd.; and (8) Shandong Deyuan Epoxy Resin Co., Ltd. For a full description of the methodology underlying the preliminary determination, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Critical Circumstances</HD> In accordance with section 733(e) of the Act and 19 CFR 351.206(c), Commerce preliminarily determines that critical circumstances exist with respect to imports of epoxy resins from China for the China-wide entity. For a full description of the methodology and results of Commerce's critical circumstances analysis, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Combination Rates</HD> In the <E T="03">Initiation Notice,</E> <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> Commerce stated that it would calculate producer/exporter combination rates for the respondents that are eligible for a separate rate in this investigation. Policy Bulletin 05.1 describes this practice. <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> In this case, because no respondent qualified for a separate rate, producer/exporter combination rates were not calculated. For a full description of the separate rate status of interested parties in this investigation, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>   <E T="03">See Initiation Notice,</E> 89 FR at 33328-33329. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Enforcement and Compliance's Policy Bulletin No. 05.1, regarding, “Separate-Rates Practice and Application of Combination Rates in Antidumping Investigations involving Non-Market Economy Countries,” (April 5, 2005) (Policy Bulletin 05.1), available at <E T="03">https://access.trade.gov/Resources/policy/bull05-1.pdf.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Preliminary Determination</HD> Commerce preliminarily determines that the following estimated weighted-average dumping margin exists: <GPOTABLE COLS="3" OPTS="L2,tp0,i1" CDEF="s200,24C,24C"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Producer/exporter</CHED> <CHED H="1"> Estimated weighted-average <ENT>354.99 *</ENT> <ENT>344.45</ENT> </ROW> <TNOTE>* Rate based on facts available with adverse inferences.</TNOTE> </GPOTABLE> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Suspension of Liquidation</HD> In accordance with section 733(d)(2) of the Act, Commerce will direct U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to suspend liquidation of subject merchandise, as described in Appendix I, entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption on or after the date of publication of this notice in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , as discussed below. Further, pursuant to section 733(d)(1)(B) of the Act and 19 CFR 351.205(d), Commerce will instruct CBP to require a cash deposit equal to the weighted-average amount by which normal value exceeds U.S. price, as indicated in the chart above as follows: (1) for all combinations of China producers/exporters of merchandise under consideration that have not established eligibility for their own separate rates, the cash deposit rate will be equal to the estimated weighted-average dumping margin established for the China-wide entity; and (2) for all third-county exporters of merchandise under consideration not listed in the table above, the cash deposit rate is the cash deposit rate applicable to the ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━