Certain Paper Plates From the People's Republic of China, Thailand, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Antidumping Duty Orders

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-570-164, A-549-849, A-552-839]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Certain Paper Plates From the People's Republic of China, Thailand, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Antidumping Duty Orders</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, Department of Commerce. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> Based on affirmative final determinations by the U.S. Department of Commerce (Commerce) and the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), Commerce is issuing antidumping duty (AD) orders on certain paper plates (paper plates) from the People's Republic of China (China), Thailand, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Vietnam). </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable March 20, 2025. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Toni Page (China); Ted Pearson (Thailand); and Bryan Hansen (Vietnam), AD/CVD Operations, Offices I and VII, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-1398, (202) 482-2631, and (202) 482-3683, respectively. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On January 28, 2025, Commerce published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> its affirmative final determinations in the less-than-fair-value (LTFV) investigations of paper plates from China, Thailand, and Vietnam. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> On March 13, 2025, the ITC notified Commerce of its final determinations, pursuant to section 735(d) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act), that an industry in the United States is materially injured, within the meaning of section 735(b)(1)(A)(i) of the Act, by reason of imports of paper plates from China, Thailand, and Vietnam sold at LTFV. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> In addition, the ITC found that critical circumstances exist with regard to imports of paper plates from China. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Certain Paper Plates From the People's Republic of China: Final Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value and Final Affirmative Determination of Critical Circumstances, in Part,</E> 90 FR 8271 (January 28, 2025) ( <E T="03">China Final Determination</E> ); <E T="03">Certain Paper Plates from Thailand: Final Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value and Final Affirmative Determination of Critical Circumstances, in Part,</E> 90 FR 8262 (January 28, 2025); and <E T="03">Certain Paper Plates From the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Final Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value and Final Affirmative Determination of Critical Circumstances, in Part,</E> 90 FR 8265 (January 28, 2025) ( <E T="03">Vietnam Final Determination</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> ITC's Letter, “Investigation Nos. 731-TA-1629-1631, 1633, 1636-1638, and 1640 (Final),” dated March 13, 2025. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Orders</HD> The products covered by these orders are paper plates from China, Thailand, and Vietnam. For a complete description of the scope of these orders, <E T="03">see</E> the appendix to this notice. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Antidumping Duty Orders</HD> Based on the above-referenced affirmative final determinations by the ITC that an industry in the United States is materially injured by reason of imports of paper plates from China, Thailand, and Vietnam sold at LTFV, and, in accordance with sections 735(c)(2) and 736 of the Act, Commerce is issuing these AD orders. Because the ITC determined that imports of paper plates from China, Thailand, and Vietnam are materially injuring a U.S. industry, unliquidated entries of such merchandise entered or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption, are subject to the assessment of antidumping duties. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Critical Circumstances—China</HD> In addition, the ITC found that critical circumstances exist with respect to imports from China subject to Commerce's affirmative critical circumstances finding within the meaning of section 735(b)(4)(A) of the Act. As a result of Commerce's affirmative critical circumstances determination, under section 735(a)(3) of the Act, and the ITC's affirmative critical circumstances determination, under section 735(b)(4)(A) of the Act, retroactive duties will be applied to the relevant imports for a period of 90 days prior to the suspension of liquidation ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> 90 days prior to the date of publication of the affirmative <E T="03">China Preliminary Determination</E> ). <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> The ITC found that critical circumstances did not exist with respect to Thailand and Vietnam. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See Certain Paper Plates from the People's Republic of China: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value, Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Critical Circumstances, in Part, Postponement of Final Determination, and Extension of Provisional Measures,</E> 89 FR 72367 (September 5, 2024) ( <E T="03">China Preliminary Determination</E> ); <E T="03">see also</E> section 735(c)(4) of the Act; <E T="03">see also</E> SAA at 876 (“If both agencies make affirmative critical circumstances determinations in their final investigations, retroactive duties will be applied for a period ninety days prior to suspension of liquidation.”). </FTNT> Therefore, in accordance with section 736(a)(1) of the Act, Commerce will direct U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to assess, upon further instruction by Commerce, antidumping duties on unliquidated entries of paper plates from China. With the exception of entries occurring after the expiration of the provisional measures period and before the publication of the ITC's final affirmative injury determinations, as further described below, antidumping duties will be assessed on unliquidated entries of paper plates from China entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption on or after June 7, 2024 ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> 90 days prior to the date of the publication of the <E T="03">China Preliminary Determination</E> ), but before September 5, 2024 ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the date of publication of the <E T="03">China Preliminary Determination</E> ). <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">See China Preliminary Determination.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Critical Circumstances—Thailand and Vietnam</HD> With respect to the ITC's negative critical circumstances determination on imports of paper plates from Thailand and Vietnam, Commerce will instruct CBP to lift suspension of liquidation and to refund any cash deposits for estimated antidumping duties with respect to entries of the subject merchandise from Thailand and Vietnam entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption on or after June 7, 2024 ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> 90 days prior to the date of the publication of the <E T="03">Thailand Preliminary Determination</E>   <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> and the <E T="03">Vietnam Preliminary Determination</E> ), <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> but before September 5, 2024 ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the date of publications of the <E T="03"> Thailand Preliminary Determination </E> and the <E T="03">Vietnam Preliminary Determination</E> ). <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See Certain Paper Plates from Thailand: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value, Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Critical Circumstances, in Part, and Postponement of Final Determination and Extension of Provisional Measures,</E> 89 FR 72370 (September 5, 2024) ( <E T="03">Thailand Preliminary Determination</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See Certain Paper Plates from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value, Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Critical Circumstances, in Part, Postponement of Final Determination, and Extension of Provisional Measures,</E> 89 FR 72375 (September 5, 2024) ( <E T="03">Vietnam Preliminary Determination</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See Thailand Preliminary Determination; see also Vietnam Preliminary Determination.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Continuation of Suspension of Liquidation and Cash Deposits</HD> Except as noted in the “Provisional Measures” section of this notice, in accordance with section 736 of the Act, Commerce will instruct CBP to continue to suspend liquidation on all relevant entries of paper plates from China, Thailand, and Vietnam. These instructions suspending liquidation will remain in effect until further notice. Commerce will also instruct CBP to require cash deposits equal to the estimated weighted-average dumping margins indicated in the tables below. Accordingly, effective on the date of publication in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> of the notice of the ITC's final affirmative injury determinations, CBP will require, at the same time as importers would normally deposit estimated duties on subject merchandise, a cash deposit equal to the rates listed below. The all-others rate applies to all producers or exporters not specifically listed, as appropriate. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Provisional Measures</HD> Section 733(d) of the Act states that suspension of liquidation pursuant to an affirmative preliminary determination may not remain in effect for more than four months, except where exporters representing a significant proportion of exports of the subject merchandise request that Commerce extend the four-month period to no more than six months. The exporters of paper plates from ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 29k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━