Slag Pots From the People's Republic of China: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-570-196]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Slag Pots From the People's Republic of China: Preliminary 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) preliminarily determines that slag pots from the People's Republic of China (China) are being, or are likely to be, sold in the United States at less than fair value (LTFV). The period of investigation is April 1, 2024, through September 30, 2024. Interested parties are invited to comment on this preliminary determination. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable June 17, 2025. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> George McMahon, AD/CVD Operations, Office VI, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-1167. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> This preliminary determination is made in accordance with section 703(b) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act). Commerce published the notice of initiation of this investigation on January 28, 2025. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> For a complete description of the events that followed the initiation of this investigation, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> A list of topics discussed in the Preliminary Decision Memorandum is included as Appendix II to this notice. The Preliminary 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 Preliminary 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 Slag Pots from the People's Republic of China: Initiation of Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigation,</E> 90 FR 8276 (January 28, 2025) ( <E T="03">Initiation Notice</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Decision Memorandum for the Preliminary Affirmative Determination in the Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigation of Slag Pots from the People's Republic of China,” dated concurrently with, and hereby adopted by, this notice (Preliminary Decision Memorandum). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Investigation</HD> The products covered by this investigation are slag pots from China. For a complete description of the scope of this investigation, <E T="03">see</E> Appendix I. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope Comments</HD> In accordance with the <E T="03">Preamble</E> to Commerce's regulations, <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> the <E T="03">Initiation Notice</E> set aside a period of time for parties to raise issues regarding product coverage ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> scope). <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> Certain interested parties commented on the scope of the investigation as it appeared in the <E T="03">Initiation Notice.</E> For a summary of the product coverage comments submitted to the record for this preliminary determination, and accompanying discussion and analysis of the comments timely received, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Scope Decision Memorandum. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> Commerce is preliminarily modifying the scope language as it appeared in the <E T="03">Initiation Notice. See</E> the revised scope in Appendix I to this notice. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See Antidumping Duties; Countervailing Duties, Final Rule,</E> 62 FR 27296, 27323 (May 19, 1997). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See Initiation Notice,</E> 90 FR at 8277. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Antidumping Duty and Countervailing Duty Investigations of Slag Pots from the People's Republic of China: Preliminary Scope Decision Memorandum,” dated March 27, 2025 (Preliminary Scope Decision Memorandum). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Methodology</HD> Commerce is conducting this investigation in accordance with section 731 of the Act. Pursuant to sections 776(a) and (b) of the Act, Commerce preliminarily has relied upon facts otherwise available, with adverse inferences, for the China-wide entity which includes: (1) Chaeng Great Wall Casting Co., Ltd.; (2) Chaugzhou Jinyuan Machinery Equipment Ltd. Co.; (3) China Minmetals Corporation; (4) Dawang Metals Co. Ltd.; (5) Dehua Protech Innovation Co., Ltd.; (6) Liaoning Mineral and Metallurgy Group Co. Ltd.; (7) MCC Baosteel Technology Services Co., Ltd.; (8) Shantou Huaxing Metallurgical Equipment Co. Ltd.; (9) Shaoguan Germany China Metal Group, Ltd.; (10) Shenyang Minmetal Import & Export Co., Ltd.; and (11) UMECC Beijing Equipment Co., Ltd. For a full description of the methodology underlying Commerce's preliminary determination, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Combination Rates</HD> In the <E T="03">Initiation Notice,</E> <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> Commerce stated that it would calculate producer/exporter combination rates for the respondents that are eligible for a separate rate in this investigation. Policy Bulletin 05.1 describes this practice. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> In this case, because no respondent qualified for a separate rate, producer/exporter combination rates were not calculated. <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See Initiation Notice,</E> 90 FR at 8280. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Enforcement and Compliance's Policy Bulletin No. 05.1, regarding, “Separate-Rates Practice and Application of Combination Rates in Antidumping Investigations involving Non-Market Economy Countries,” (April 5, 2005) (Policy Bulletin 05.1), available on Commerce's website at <E T="03">https://enforcement.trade.gov/policy/bull05-1.pdf.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Preliminary Determination</HD> Commerce preliminarily determines that the following estimated dumping margin exists: <GPOTABLE COLS="3" OPTS="L2,tp0,i1" CDEF="s50,12C,12C"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Producer/exporter</CHED> <ENT>* 294.43</ENT> <ENT>278.81</ENT> </ROW> <TNOTE>* Rate is based on facts available with adverse inferences.</TNOTE> </GPOTABLE> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Suspension of Liquidation</HD> In accordance with section 733(d)(2) of the Act, Commerce will direct U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to suspend liquidation of subject merchandise as described in the scope of the investigation section entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption on or after the date of publication of this notice in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , as discussed below. Further, pursuant to section 733(d)(1)(B) of the Act and 19 CFR 351.205(d), Commerce will instruct CBP to require a cash deposit equal to the weighted-average amount by which normal value exceeds U.S. price, as indicated in the chart above, as follows: (1) for all combinations of Chinese producers/exporters of merchandise under consideration that have not established eligibility for their own separate rates, the cash deposit rate will be equal to the estimated weighted-average dumping margin established for the China-wide entity; and (2) for all third-country exporters of merchandise under consideration, the cash deposit rate is the cash deposit rate applicable to the China-wide entity. To determine the cash deposit rate, Commerce normally adjusts the estimated weighted-average dumping margin by the amount of domestic subsidy pass-through and export subsidies determined in a companion countervailing duty (CVD) proceeding when CVD provisional measures are in effect. Accordingly, where Commerce has made a preliminary affirmative determination for domestic subsidy pass-through or export subsidies, Commerce has offset the calculated estimated weighted-average dumping margin by the appropriate rate(s). Any such adjusted rates may be found in the “Preliminary Determination” section's chart of estimated weighted-average dumping margins above. Should provisional measures in the companion CVD investigation expire prior to the expiration of provisional measures in this LTFV investigation, Commerce will direct CBP to begin collecting cash deposits at a rate equal to the estimated weighted-average dumping margins calculated in this preliminary determination unadjusted for the passed-through domestic subsidies or for export subsidies at the time the CVD provisional measures expire. These suspension of liquidation instructions will remain in effect until further notice. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Disclosure</HD> Normally, Commerce discloses to interested parties the calculations performed in connection with a preliminary determination within five days of its public announcement or, if there is no public announcement, within five days of the date of publication of this notice, in accordance with 19 CFR 351.224(b). However, because Commerce preliminarily determined that all companies are part of the China-wide entity and assigned to the China-wide entity, as AFA, a rate that is based solely on the margin alleged in the Petition, there are no calculations to disclose. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Petitioner's Letter, “Slag Pots from the People's Republic of China: Petitions for the Imposition of Antidumping and Countervailing Duties,” dated December 31, 2024 (Petition). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Verification</HD> Because no companies in this investigation demonstrated eligibility for a separat ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━