Melamine From Germany: Final Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-428-852]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Melamine From Germany: Final Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value</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 melamine from Germany is being, or is likely to be, sold in the United States at less than fair value (LTFV). The period of investigation (POI) is January 1, 2023, through December 31, 2023. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable December 9, 2024. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Noah Wetzel, AD/CVD Operations, Office VIII, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-7466. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On September 24, 2024, Commerce published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> its preliminary determination in the LTFV investigation of melamine from Germany and invited interested parties to comment. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> No interested party submitted comments. Accordingly, the final determination remains unchanged from the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> and no decision memoranda accompany this notice. The <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> is hereby adopted in this final determination. Commerce conducted this LTFV investigation in accordance with section 735 of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act). <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Melamine from Germany: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value,</E> 89 FR 77822 (September 24, 2024) ( <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> ), and accompanying Preliminary Decision Memorandum. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Investigation</HD> The product covered by this investigation is melamine from Germany. For a complete description of the scope of this investigation, <E T="03">see</E> the appendix to this notice. <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 stated in the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination,</E> after being selected as the sole mandatory respondent, LAT Nitrogen Piesteritz GmbH (LAT Nitrogen), declined to participate and did not provide information requested by Commerce. Accordingly, Commerce based the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> entirely on the application of facts available with adverse inferences (AFA), and did not conduct verification under section 782(i) of the Act. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Use of Adverse Facts Available</HD> As discussed in the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination,</E> we assigned LAT Nitrogen an estimated weighted-average dumping margin based entirely on AFA, pursuant to sections 776(a) and (b) of Act. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> There is no new information on the record that would cause us to revisit our decision in the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination.</E> Accordingly, for this final determination, we continue to find that the application of AFA pursuant to sections 776(a) and (b) of the Act is warranted with respect to LAT Nitrogen. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">Id.,</E> 89 FR 77822. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">All-Others Rate</HD> Section 735(c)(5)(A) of the Act provides that the estimated weighted-average dumping margin for all other producers and exporters not individually investigated shall be equal to the weighted average of the estimated weighted-average dumping margins established for exporters and producers individually investigated excluding rates that are zero, <E T="03">de minimis,</E> or determined entirely under section 776 of the Act. In the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination,</E> we assigned a dumping margin of 179.24 percent as the all-others rate based on a simple average of the calculated rates in the petition, pursuant to section 735(c)(5)(B) of the Act. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> As noted above, we received no comments on our <E T="03">Preliminary Determination;</E> thus, we continue to assign a dumping margin of 179.24 percent as the all-others rate for this final determination. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Final Determination</HD> The final estimated weighted-average dumping margins are as follows: <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,tp0,i1" CDEF="s25,9"> <CHED H="1">Exporter/producer</CHED> <ENT I="01">LAT Nitrogen Piesteritz GmbH</ENT> <ENT>* 218.73</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">All Others</ENT> <ENT>179.24</ENT> </ROW> <TNOTE>* Rate based on facts available with adverse inferences.</TNOTE> </GPOTABLE> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Disclosure</HD> Normally, Commerce will disclose to the parties in a proceeding the calculations performed in connection with a final determination within five days of any public announcement or, if there is no public announcement, within five days of the date of publication of the notice of final determination in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> <E T="03">,</E> in accordance with 19 CFR 351.224(b). However, because Commerce received no comments on the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination,</E> it is adopting the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> as the final determination in this investigation. Consequently, there are no new calculations to disclose. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Suspension of Liquidation</HD> In accordance with section 735(c)(4) of the Act, we will instruct U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to continue to suspend liquidation of subject merchandise, as described in the appendix to this notice, entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption, on or after September 24, 2024, which is the date of publication of the affirmative <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . Pursuant to section 735(c)(1)(B)(ii) of the Act and 19 CFR 351.210(d), where appropriate, Commerce will instruct CBP to require a cash deposit equal to the estimated weighted-average dumping margin or the estimated all-others rate as follows: (1) the cash deposit rate for the respondent listed above will be equal to the company-specific estimated weighted-average dumping margin determined in this final determination; (2) if the exporter is not a respondent identified above, but the producer is, then the cash deposit rate will be equal to the company-specific estimated weighted-average dumping margin established for that producer of the subject merchandise; and (3) the cash deposit rate for all other producers and exporters will be equal to the all-others estimated weighted-average dumping margin. These suspension of liquidation instructions will remain in effect until further notice. <HD SOURCE="HD1">U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) Notification</HD> In accordance with section 735(d) of the Act, we will notify the ITC of the final affirmative determination of sales at LTFV. Because Commerce's final determination is affirmative, in accordance with section 735(b)(2) of the Act, the ITC will make its final determination as to whether the domestic industry in the United States is materially injured, or threatened with material injury, by reason of imports or sales (or the likelihood of sales) for importation of melamine from Germany no later than 45 days after this final determination. If the ITC determines that such injury does not exist, this proceeding will be terminated, and all cash deposits will be refunded, and suspension of liquidation will be lifted. If the ITC determines that material injury, or the threat of material injury, exists, Commerce will issue an antidumping duty order directing CBP to assess, upon further instruction by Commerce, antidumping duties on all imports of the subject merchandise entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption on or after the effective date of the suspension of liquidation, as discussed above in the “Suspension of Liquidation” section above. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Administrative Protective Order (APO)</HD> This notice serves as the only reminder to parties subject to an APO of their responsibility concerning the disposition of proprietary information disclosed under APO in accordance with 19 CFR 351.305(a)(3). Timely written notification of the return or destruction of APO materials or conversion to judicial protective order is hereby requested. Failure to comply with the regulations and terms of an APO is a sanctionable violation. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Notification to Interested Parties</HD> This determination and this notice are issued and published pursuant to sections 735(d) and 777(i)(1) of the Act, and 19 CFR 351.210(c). <SIG> <DATED>Dated: December 2, 2024.</DATED> <NAME>Abdelali Elouaradia,</NAME> Deputy Assistant Secretary for Enforcement and Compliance. </SIG> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Appendix</HD> <EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Investigation</HD> The merchandise subject to this investigation is melamine (Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) registry number 108-78-01, molecular formula C3 H6 N6). Melamine is also known as 2,4,6-triamino-striazine; 1,3,5-Triazine-2,4,6- triamine; Cyanurotriamide; Cyanurotriamine; Cyanuramide; and by various brand names. Melamine is a crystalline powder or granule. All melamine is covered by the scope of this investigation irrespective of purity, particle size, or physical form. Melamine that has been blended with other products is included within this scope when such blends include cons ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 11k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━