Erythritol From the People's Republic of China: Initiation of Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigation

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-570-192]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Erythritol From the People's Republic of China: Initiation of Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigation</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, Department of Commerce. <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable January 2, 2025. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Brian Smith, Office VIII, AD/CVD Operations, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-1766. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">The Petition</HD> On December 13, 2024, the U.S. Department of Commerce (Commerce) received an antidumping duty (AD) petition concerning imports of erythritol from the People's Republic of China (China) filed in proper form on behalf of Cargill, Incorporated (the petitioner), a U.S. producer of erythritol. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The AD Petition was accompanied by a countervailing duty (CVD) petition concerning imports of erythritol from China. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Petitioner's Letter, “Petition for the Imposition of Antidumping and Countervailing Duties,” dated December 13, 2024 (Petition). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> On December 17, 2024, Commerce requested supplemental information pertaining to certain aspects of the Petition in supplemental questionnaires. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> On December 19, 2024, the petitioner filed timely responses to these requests for additional information. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Commerce's Letters, “Supplemental Questions,” dated December 17, 2024 (General Issues Questionnaire); and “Supplemental Questions,” dated December 17, 2024. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Petitioner's Letters, “Response to Supplemental Petition Questionnaire,” dated December 19, 2024 (General Issues Supplement); and “Response to Supplemental Petition Questionnaire,” dated December 19, 2024. </FTNT> In accordance with section 732(b) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act), the petitioner alleges that imports of erythritol from China 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 erythritol industry in the United States. Consistent with section 732(b)(1) of the Act, the Petition was accompanied by information reasonably available to the petitioner supporting its allegations. Commerce finds that the petitioner filed the Petition 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 investigation. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> section on “Determination of Industry Support for the Petition,” <E T="03">infra.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Period of Investigation</HD> Because the Petition was filed on December 13, 2024, and because China is a non-market economy (NME) country, pursuant to 19 CFR 351.204(b)(1), the period of investigation (POI) for the LTFV investigation is April 1, 2024, through September 30, 2024. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Investigation</HD> The product covered by this investigation is erythritol from China. For a full description of the scope of this investigation, <E T="03">see</E> the appendix to this notice. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments on the Scope of the Investigation</HD> On December 17, 2024, Commerce requested information and clarification from the petitioner regarding the proposed scope to ensure that the scope language in the Petition is an accurate reflection of the products for which the domestic industry is seeking relief. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> On December 19, 2024, the petitioner provided clarifications and revised the scope. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> The description of merchandise covered by this investigation, as described in the appendix to this notice, reflects these clarifications. <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> General Issues Questionnaire. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> General Issues Supplement at 2-3 and Exhibit GEN-S-2. </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 determination. 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 January 22, 2025, which 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 February 3, 2025, which is the next business day after 10 calendar days from the initial comment deadline. <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> <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> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 19 CFR 351.303(b)(1). The deadline for scope rebuttal comments falls on February 1, 2025, which is a Saturday. In accordance with 19 CFR 351.303(b)(1), Commerce will accept scope rebuttal comments filed by 5:00 p.m. ET on February 3, 2025 (“For both electronically filed and manually filed documents, if the applicable due date falls on a non-business day, the Secretary will accept documents that are filed on the next business day.”). </FTNT> Commerce requests that any factual information that parties consider relevant to the scope of this investigation be submitted during that period. However, if a party subsequently finds that additional factual information pertaining to the scope of the investigation 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>11</SU> <FTREF/> An electronically filed document must be received successfully in its entirety by the time and date it is due. <FTNT> <SU>11</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 erythritol 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) 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. In order to consider the suggestions of interested parties in developing and issuing the AD questionnaires, all product characteristics comments must be filed by 5:00 p.m. ET on January 22, 2025, which is 20 calendar days from the signature date of this notice. Any rebuttal comments must be filed by 5:00 p.m. ET on February 3, 2025, which is the next business day after 10 calendar days from the initial comment deadline. <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> All comments and submissions to Commerce must be filed electronically using ACCESS, as explained above, on the record of the LTFV investigation. <FTNT> <SU>12</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 19 CFR 351.303(b)(1). The deadline for rebuttal comments on product characteristics falls on February 1, 2025, which is a Saturday. In accordance with 19 CFR 351.303(b)(1), Commerce will accept comments filed by 5:00 p.m. ET on February 3, 2025 (“For both electronically filed and manually filed documents, if the applicable due date falls on a non-business day, the Secretary will accept documents that are filed on the next business day.”). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Determination of Industry Support for the Petition</HD> Section 732(b)(1) of the Act requires that a petition be filed on behalf of the domestic indu ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 38k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━