Hard Empty Capsules From Brazil, the People's Republic of China, India, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Initiation of Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigations

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-351-864, A-570-184, A-533-934, A-552-847]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Hard Empty Capsules From Brazil, the People's Republic of China, India, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Initiation of Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigations</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, Department of Commerce. <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable November 13, 2024. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Gemma Larsen at (202) 482-8125 (Brazil), Rebecca Janz at (202) 482-2972 (the People's Republic of China (China)), Luke Caruso at (202) 482-2081 (India), and Jinny Ahn at (202) 482-0239 (the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Vietnam)), AD/CVD Operations, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">The Petitions</HD> On October 24, 2024, the U.S. Department of Commerce (Commerce) received antidumping duty (AD) petitions concerning imports of hard empty capsules from Brazil, China, India, and Vietnam filed in proper form on behalf of Lonza Greenwood LLC (the petitioner), a U.S. producer of hard empty capsules. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The AD Petitions were accompanied by countervailing duty (CVD) petitions concerning imports of hard empty capsules from Brazil, China, India, and Vietnam. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Petitioner's Letter, “Petitions for the Imposition of Antidumping and Countervailing Duties,” dated October 24, 2024 (Petitions). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> Between October 28 and November 5, 2024, Commerce requested supplemental information pertaining to certain aspects of the Petitions in supplemental questionnaires. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The petitioner responded to Commerce's supplemental questionnaires between October 30 and November 6, 2024. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Commerce's Letters, “Supplemental Questions,” dated October 28, 2024; <E T="03">see also</E> Country-Specific AD Supplemental Questionnaires: Brazil Supplemental, China Supplemental, India Supplemental, and Vietnam Supplemental, dated October 28, 2024; and Memorandum, “Phone Call,” dated November 5, 2024 (November 5, 2024, Memorandum). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Petitioner's Letters, “Petitioner's Response to the Department's General Issues Questionnaire,” dated October 30, 2024 (General Issues Supplement); <E T="03">see also</E> Country-Specific AD Supplemental Responses: Brazil AD Supplement, China AD Supplement, India AD Supplement, and Vietnam AD Supplement, dated November 1 and 5, 2024; Petitioner's Letter, “Petitioner's Response to the Department's General Issues Scope Questionnaire,” dated November 6, 2024 (Scope Supplement); and Country-Specific Second AD Supplemental Responses: Second Brazil AD Supplement and Second India AD Supplement, dated November 6, 2024. </FTNT> In accordance with section 732(b) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act), the petitioner alleges that imports of hard empty capsules from Brazil, China, India, and Vietnam are being, or are likely to be, sold in the United States at less than fair value (LTFV) within the meaning of section 731 of the Act, and that imports of such products are materially injuring, or threatening material injury to, the hard empty capsules industry in the United States. Consistent with section 732(b)(1) of the Act, the Petitions were accompanied by information reasonably available to the petitioner supporting its allegations. Commerce finds that the petitioner filed the Petitions on behalf of the domestic industry, because the petitioner is an interested party, as defined in section 771(9)(C) of the Act. Commerce also finds that the petitioner demonstrated sufficient industry support for the initiation of the requested LTFV investigations. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> section on “Determination of Industry Support for the Petitions,” <E T="03">infra.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Periods of Investigation</HD> Because the Petitions were filed on October 24, 2024, pursuant to 19 CFR 351.204(b)(1), the period of investigation (POI) for the Brazil and India LTFV investigations is October 1, 2023, through September 30, 2024. Because China and Vietnam are non-market economy (NME) countries, pursuant to 19 CFR 351.204(b)(1), the POI for the China and Vietnam LTFV investigations is April 1, 2024, through September 30, 2024. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Investigations</HD> The products covered by these investigations are hard empty capsules from Brazil, China, India, and Vietnam. For a full description of the scope of these investigations, <E T="03">see</E> the appendix to this notice. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments on the Scope of the Investigations</HD> On November 5, 2024, Commerce requested information and clarification from the petitioner regarding the proposed scope to ensure that the scope language in the Petitions is an accurate reflection of the products for which the domestic industry is seeking relief. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> On November 6, 2024, the petitioner provided clarifications and revised the scope. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> The description of merchandise covered by these investigations, as described in the appendix to this notice, reflects these clarifications. <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> November 5, 2024, Memorandum. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Scope Supplement at 1-8 and Exhibit I-92. </FTNT> As discussed in the <E T="03">Preamble</E> to Commerce's regulations, we are setting aside a period for interested parties to raise issues regarding product coverage ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> scope). <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> Commerce will consider all scope comments received from interested parties and, if necessary, will consult with interested parties prior to the issuance of the preliminary determinations. If scope comments include factual information, <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> all such factual information should be limited to public information. To facilitate preparation of its questionnaires, Commerce requests that scope comments be submitted by 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) on December 3, 2024, which is 20 calendar days from the signature date of this notice. Any rebuttal comments, which may include factual information, and should also be limited to public information, must be filed by 5:00 p.m. ET on December 13, 2024, which is 10 calendar days from the initial comment deadline. <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See Antidumping Duties; Countervailing Duties, Final Rule,</E> 62 FR 27296, 27323 (May 19, 1997) ( <E T="03">Preamble</E> ); <E T="03">see also</E> 19 CFR 351.312. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 19 CFR 351.102(b)(21) (defining “factual information”). </FTNT> Commerce requests that any factual information that parties consider relevant to the scope of these investigations be submitted during that period. However, if a party subsequently finds that additional factual information pertaining to the scope of the investigations may be relevant, the party must contact Commerce and request permission to submit the additional information. All scope comments must be filed simultaneously on the records of the concurrent LTFV and CVD investigations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Filing Requirements</HD> All submissions to Commerce must be filed electronically via Enforcement and Compliance's Antidumping Duty and Countervailing Duty Centralized Electronic Service System (ACCESS), unless an exception applies. <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> An electronically filed document must be received successfully in its entirety by the time and date it is due. <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>   <E T="03">See Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Proceedings: Electronic Filing Procedures; Administrative Protective Order Procedures,</E> 76 FR 39263 (July 6, 2011); <E T="03">see also Enforcement and Compliance: Change of Electronic Filing System Name,</E> 79 FR 69046 (November 20, 2014) for details of Commerce's electronic filing requirements, effective August 5, 2011. Information on using ACCESS can be found at <E T="03">https://access.trade.gov/help.aspx</E> and a handbook can be found at <E T="03">https://access.trade.gov/help/Handbook_on_Electronic_Filing_Procedures.pdf.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments on Product Characteristics</HD> Commerce is providing interested parties an opportunity to comment on the appropriate physical characteristics of hard empty capsules to be reported in response to Commerce's AD questionnaires. This information will be used to identify the key physical characteristics of the subject merchandise in order to report the relevant factors of production (FOP) or cost of production (COP) accurately, as well as to develop appropriate product comparison criteria. Interested parties may provide any information or comments that they feel are relevant to the development of an accurate list of physical characteristics. Specifically, they may provide comments as to which characteristics are appropriate to use as: (1) general product characteristics; and (2) product comparison criteria. We note that it is not always appropriate to use all product characteristics as product comparison criteria. We base product comparison criteria on meaningful commercial differences among products. In other words, although there may be some physical product characteristics utilized by manufacturers to describe hard empty capsules, it may be that only a select few product characteristics take into ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 51k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━