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

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[C-557-829]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Ferrosilicon From Malaysia: Final Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination and Final Affirmative Determination of Critical Circumstances, 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 Malaysia during the period of investigation (POI), 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> Suresh Maniam or Stefan Smith, AD/CVD Operations, Office I, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-1603 or (202) 482-4342, respectively. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On September 10, 2024, Commerce published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> and invited comments from interested parties. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> For a complete description of the events that occurred since Commerce published the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination,</E> as well as a full discussion of the issues raised by parties for this final determination, <E T="03">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">http://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 Malaysia: 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 73364 (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 in the Countervailing Duty Investigation of Ferrosilicon from Malaysia,” 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 from Malaysia. 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 Malaysia (GOM), OM Materials (Sarawak) Sdn. Bhd (OM Materials), and Pertama Ferroalloys Sdn. Bhd (Pertama) in October 2024 using standard verification procedures, including an examination of relevant sales and accounting records, and original source documents provided by the GOM, OM Materials, and Pertama. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memoranda, “Verification of the Questionnaire Responses of Government of Malaysia,” dated November 22, 2024; “Verification of the Questionnaire Responses of Pertama Ferroalloys Sdn. Bhd,” dated November 22, 2024; and “Verification of the Questionnaire Responses of OM Materials (Sarawak) Sdn. Bhd,” dated November 25, 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 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; <E T="03">see also</E> 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, including adverse facts available (AFA), pursuant to sections 776(a) and (b) of the Act. For a full discussion of our application of AFA, <E T="03">see</E> the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E>   <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> and section “Use of Facts Otherwise Available and Application of Adverse Inferences” in the accompanying Issues and Decision Memorandum. <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">See Preliminary Determination</E> PDM at 7-17. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Final Affirmative Determination of Critical Circumstances, in Part</HD> In accordance with sections 705(a)(2) and 776(a) and 776(b) of the Act and 19 CFR 351.206, Commerce finds that critical circumstances exist with respect to imports of ferrosilicon for all other producers and exporters not individually examined. In addition, we find that critical circumstances do not exist with respect to imports of ferrosilicon from Malaysia for OM Materials and Pertama. 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 analysis of the information received during verification, for this final determination, we made certain changes to the countervailable subsidy rate calculations for OM Materials, Pertama, and for all other producers/exporters. 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 those 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. In this investigation, Commerce calculated individual estimated countervailable subsidy rates for OM Materials and Pertama that are not zero, <E T="03">de minimis,</E> or based entirely on facts otherwise available. Commerce calculated the all-others rate using a weighted average of the individual estimated subsidy rates calculated for the examined respondents using each company's publicly ranged values for the merchandise under consideration. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  With two respondents under examination, Commerce normally calculates: (A) a weighted-average of the estimated subsidy rates calculated for the examined respondents; (B) a simple average of the estimated subsidy rates calculated for the examined respondents; and (C) a weighted-average of the estimated subsidy rates calculated for the examined respondents using each company's publicly-ranged U.S. sale values for the merchandise under consideration. Commerce then compares (B) and (C) to (A) and selects the rate closest to (A) as the most appropriate rate for all other producers and exporters. <E T="03">See, e.g., Ball Bearings and Parts Thereof from France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom: Final Results of Antidumping Duty Administrative Reviews, Final Results of Changed-Circumstances Review, and Revocation of an Order in Part,</E> 75 FR 53661, 53662 (September 1, 2010), and accompanying Issues and Decision Memorandum at Comment 1. As complete publicly ranged sales data were available, Commerce based the all-others rate on the publicly ranged sales data of the mandatory respondents. For a complete analysis of the data, <E T="03">see</E> the All-Others Rate Calculation Memorandum. </FTNT> <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: <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  Commerce has found the following companies to be cross-owned with OM Materials: OM Materials & Logistics (M) Sdn. Bhd; OM Materials (Samalaju) Sdn. Bhd; and OM Engineering Tech (M) Sdn. Bhd. </FTNT> <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,tp0,i1" CDEF="s25,10"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Company</CHED> <CHED H="1"> Subsidy rate (percent <E T="03">ad valorem</E> OM Materials (Sarawak) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━