Certain Epoxy Resins From the Republic of Korea: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value, Preliminary Negative Critical Circumstances Determination, Postponement of Final Determination, and Extension of Provisional Measures

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-580-919]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Certain Epoxy Resins From the Republic of Korea: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value, Preliminary Negative Critical Circumstances Determination, Postponement of Final Determination, and Extension of Provisional Measures</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 Republic of Korea (Korea) are being, or are likely to be, sold in the United States at less than fair value (LTFV). The period of investigation (POI) is April 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> Joy Zhang or Laura Delgado, AD/CVD Operations, Office III, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-1168 or (202) 482-1468, respectively. </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 investigation on April 29, 2024. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> 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>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> <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 India” 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 Korea. 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 stated 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 and constructed export prices in accordance with sections 772(a) and (b) of the Act, respectively. Normal value is calculated in accordance with section 773 of the Act. For a full description of the methodology underlying the preliminary determination, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Preliminary Negative Determination of Critical Circumstances</HD> In accordance with section 733(e)(1) of the Act and 19 CFR 351.206(c), Commerce preliminarily finds that critical circumstances do not exist with respect to imports of epoxy resins from Korea for Kukdo Chemical Co., Ltd. and Kukdo Finechem (collectively Kukdo/Finechem), <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> Kumho P&B Chemicals Inc. (Kumho P&B), and all other exporters or producers not individually examined. For a full description of the methodology and results of Commerce's critical circumstances analysis, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>  Commerce preliminarily determines that these companies are a single entity. <E T="03">See</E> Preliminary Decision Memorandum; <E T="03">see also</E> Memorandum, “Preliminary Affiliation and Collapsing Memorandum,” dated concurrently with this notice. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">All-Others Rate</HD> Sections 733(d)(1)(ii) and 735(c)(5)(A) of the Act provide that in the preliminary determination, Commerce shall determine an estimated all-others rate for all exporters and producers not individually examined. This rate shall be an amount equal to the weighted average of the estimated weighted-average dumping margins established for exporters and producers individually investigated, excluding any rates that are zero, <E T="03">de minimis,</E> or determined entirely under section 776 of the Act. In this investigation, Commerce calculated estimated weighted-average dumping margins for Kukdo/Finechem and Kumho P&B that are not zero, <E T="03">de minimis,</E> or based entirely on facts otherwise available. Commerce calculated the all-others rate using a weighted average of the estimated weighted-average dumping margins calculated for the examined respondents using each company's publicly-ranged values for the merchandise under consideration. <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>  With two respondents under examination, Commerce normally calculates: (A) a weighted-average of the estimated weighted-average dumping margins calculated for the examined respondents; (B) a simple average of the estimated weighted-average dumping margins calculated for the examined respondents; and (C) a weighted-average of the estimated weighted-average dumping margins 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, <E T="03">see</E> the All-Others Rate Calculation Memorandum. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Preliminary Determination</HD> Commerce preliminarily determines that the following estimated weighted-average dumping margins exist: <GPOTABLE COLS="3" OPTS="L2,tp0,i1" CDEF="s100,24,xs108"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Exporter/producer</CHED> <CHED H="1"> Estimated weighted-average <ENT>24.65</E ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 24k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━