Ferrosilicon From Brazil: Final Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination and Final Affirmative Critical Circumstances Determination, in Part

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[C-351-861]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Ferrosilicon From Brazil: Final Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination and Final Affirmative Critical Circumstances Determination, in Part</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 countervailable subsidies are being provided to producers and exporters of ferrosilicon from Brazil. The period of investigation (POI) is January 1, 2023, through December 31, 2023. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable March 28, 2025. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Bob Palmer or Laurel Smalley, 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) 482-9068 or (202) 482-3456, respectively. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On September 10, 2024, Commerce published the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> We invited interested parties to comment on the <E T="03"> Preliminary Determination. </E> For a complete description of the events that followed the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination, see</E> the Issues and Decision Memorandum. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> The Issues and 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 Issues and Decision Memorandum can be accessed directly at <E T="03">https://access.trade.gov/public/FRNoticesListLayout.aspx.</E> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Ferrosilicon from Brazil: Preliminary Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination, Preliminary Affirmative Critical Circumstances Determination in Part, and Alignment of Final Determination With Final Antidumping Duty Determination,</E> 89 FR 73371 (September 10, 2024) ( <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> ), and accompanying Preliminary Decision Memorandum (PDM). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Issues and Decision Memorandum for the Final Affirmative Determination of the Countervailing Duty Investigation of Ferrosilicon from Brazil,” dated concurrently with, and hereby adopted by, this notice (Issues and Decision Memorandum). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Investigation</HD> The product covered by this investigation is ferrosilicon. For a complete description of the scope of this investigation, <E T="03">see</E> Appendix I. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope Comments</HD> No interested party commented on the scope of the investigation as it appeared in the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination.</E> Therefore, no changes were made to the scope of the investigation. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Verification</HD> Commerce conducted verification of the information relied upon in making its final determination in this investigation, in accordance with section 782(i) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act). Specifically, we conducted on-site verifications of the subsidy information reported by the Government of Brazil (GOB), Companhia de Ferro Ligas da Bahia—FERBASA (Ferbasa), and Minasligas S.A. (Minasligas) in October 2024 using standard verification procedures, including an examination of relevant sales and accounting records, and original source documents provided by the GOB, Ferbasa, and Minasligas. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memoranda, “Verification of the Questionnaire Responses of Companhia de Ferro Ligas da Bahia—FERBASA,” dated December 20, 2024; “Verification of the Questionnaire Responses of the Government of Brazil,” dated December 20, 2024; and “Verification of the Questionnaire Responses of Minasligas S.A.,” dated December 19, 2024. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Analysis of Comments Received</HD> The subsidy programs under investigation, and the issues raised in the case and rebuttal briefs that were submitted by parties in this investigation, are discussed in the Issues and Decision Memorandum. For a list of the issues raised by parties, and to which we responded in the Issues and Decision Memorandum, <E T="03">see</E> Appendix II. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Methodology</HD> Commerce conducted this investigation in accordance with section 701 of the Act. For each of the subsidy programs found to be countervailable, Commerce determines that there is a subsidy, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> a financial contribution by an “authority” that gives rise to a benefit to the recipient, and that the subsidy is specific. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> For a full description of the methodology underlying our final determination, <E T="03">see</E> the Issues and Decision Memorandum. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> sections 771(5)(B) and (D) of the Act regarding financial contribution; section 771(5)(E) of the Act regarding benefit; and section 771(5A) of the Act regarding specificity. </FTNT> In making this final determination, Commerce relied, in part, on facts available and, because it finds that one or more respondents did not act to the best of its ability to respond to Commerce's requests for information, Commerce has drawn an adverse inference where appropriate in selecting from among the facts otherwise available. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> For a full discussion of our application of adverse facts available (AFA), <E T="03">see</E> the “Use of Facts Otherwise Available and Application of Adverse Inferences” section in the Issues and Decision Memorandum. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> sections 776(a) and (b) of the Act. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Issues and Decision Memorandum at 5-9. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Final Affirmative Determination of Critical Circumstances, in Part</HD> In accordance with sections 703(e)(1) and 776(a) and 776(b) of the Act and 19 CFR 351.206, Commerce continues to find that critical circumstances exist with respect to imports of ferrosilicon from Minasligas, and Ligas de Aluminio S.A. (LIASA), but do not exist with respect to Ferbasa 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 Issues and Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Changes Since the Preliminary Determination</HD> Based on our findings at verification and our review and analysis of the comments received from parties, for this final determination, we made certain changes to the countervailable subsidy rate calculations for Ferbasa and for all other producers/exporters. We also updated the data supporting our critical circumstances analysis. For a discussion of these changes, <E T="03">see</E> the Issues and Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">All-Others Rate</HD> Pursuant to section 705(c)(5)(A)(i) of the Act, Commerce will determine an all-others rate equal to the weighted-average countervailable subsidy rates established for exporters and/or producers individually investigated, excluding any zero and <E T="03">de minimis</E> countervailable subsidy rates, and any rates based entirely under section 776 of the Act. We continue to calculate individual estimated countervailable subsidy rates for Ferbasa and Minasligas that are not zero, <E T="03">de minimis,</E> or based entirely on facts otherwise available under section 776 of the Act. We, therefore, continue to calculate the all-others rate using a weighted average of the individual estimated subsidy rates calculated for Ferbasa and Minasligas, the individually examined exporters/producers in this investigation, pursuant to section 705(c)(5)(A)(i) of the Act. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Final Determination</HD> Commerce determines that the following estimated countervailable subsidy rates exist for the period January 1, 2023, through December 31, 2023: <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,nj,tp0,i1" CDEF="s25,10"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Company</CHED> <CHED H="1"> Subsidy rate (percent <E T="03">ad valorem</E> Companhia de Ferro Ligas da Bahia—FERBASA  <SU>7</SU> </ENT> <ENT>5.25</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01"> Minasligas S.A. <SU>8</SU> </ENT> <ENT>4.44</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Ligas de Aluminio S.A.</ENT> <ENT>* 61.73</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">All Others</ENT> <ENT>5.01</ENT> </ROW> <TNOTE>* Rate based on AFA.</TNOTE> </GPOTABLE> <HD SOURCE="HD1">  Commerce has found the following company to be cross-owned with Ferbasa: Fundação José Carvalho Foundation (Jose Carvalho Foundation). <SU>8</SU>  Commerce has found the following companies to be cross-owned with Minasligas: Irmazi Participações S.A. (Irmazi), Participações SZ Ltd. (SZ), and Centrium Empreendimentos Ltda. (Centrium). </FTNT> Commerce intends to disclose its calculations and analysis performed to interested parties in this final determination within five days of any public announcement, or if there is no public announcement, within five days of the date of the publication of this notice in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , in accordance with 19 CFR 351.224(b). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Continuation of Suspension of Liquidation</HD> As a result of our <E T="03">Preliminary Determination,</E> and pursuant to sections 703(d)(1)(B) and (d)(2) of the Act, Commerce instructed U.S. Customs and Border Prot ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━