Phosphate Fertilizers From the Russian Federation: Preliminary Results and Partial Rescission of Countervailing Duty Administrative Review; 2023

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[C-821-825]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Phosphate Fertilizers From the Russian Federation: Preliminary Results and Partial Rescission of Countervailing Duty Administrative Review; 2023</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 countervailable subsidies are being provided to Joint Stock Company Apatit (JSC Apatit), a producer and exporter of phosphate fertilizers from the Russian Federation (Russia). The period of review (POR) is January 1, 2023, through December 31, 2023. In addition, Commerce is rescinding this review with respect to Industrial Group Phosphorite LLC. Interested parties are invited to comment on these preliminary results. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable August 8, 2025. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Shane Subler or Henry Wolfe, 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) 482-6241 or (202) 482-0574, respectively. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On June 12, 2024, Commerce published a notice of initiation of an administrative review of the countervailing duty order on phosphate fertilizers from Russia. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> On November 25, 2024, Commerce postponed the preliminary results of this review until May 7, 2025, in accordance with section 751(a)(3)(A) of Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act), and 19 CFR 351.213(h)(2). <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> On July 22, 2024, and December 9, 2024, Commerce tolled certain deadlines in this administrative proceeding by seven and 90 days, respectively. The deadline for the preliminary results is now August 5, 2025. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Initiation of Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Administrative Reviews,</E> 89 FR 49859 (June 12, 2024); <E T="03">see also Phosphate Fertilizers from the Kingdom of Morocco and the Russian Federation: Countervailing Duty Orders,</E> 86 FR 18037 (April 7, 2021) (Order). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Extension of Deadline for Preliminary Results of Countervailing Duty Administrative Review,” dated November 25, 2024. </FTNT> For a complete description of the events that followed the initiation of this review, see the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> A list of topics included in the Preliminary Decision Memorandum is provided as the appendix 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>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Decision Memorandum for the Preliminary Results and Partial Rescission of the Countervailing Duty Administrative Review of Phosphate Fertilizers from the Russian Federation; 2023,” dated concurrently with, and hereby adopted by, this notice (Preliminary Decision Memorandum). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Order</HD> The product covered by the <E T="03">Order</E> is phosphate fertilizers. For a complete description of the scope of the <E T="03">Order</E> , <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Rescission of Administrative Review, In Part</HD> Pursuant to 19 CFR 351.213(d)(3), Commerce will rescind an administrative review when there are no reviewable suspended entries. Based on our analysis of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) information, we preliminarily determine that Industrial Group Phosphorite LLC, had no entries of subject merchandise during the POR. On July 9, 2024, we notified parties that we intended to rescind this administrative review with respect to the one company which had no reviewable suspended entries. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> No parties commented on the notification of intent to rescind the review, in part. We are therefore rescinding the administrative review of this company which had no reviewable suspended entries. For further information, see the Preliminary Decision Memorandum the at “Partial Rescission of Administrative Review” section. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Notice of Intent to Rescind Review, In Part,” dated July 9, 2024. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Methodology</HD> Commerce is conducting this administrative review in accordance with 751(a)(1)(A) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act). For each of the subsidy programs found countervailable, Commerce preliminarily 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>5</SU> <FTREF/> For a full description of the methodology underlying our conclusions, including our reliance, in part, on facts otherwise available with adverse inferences pursuant to sections 776(a) and (b) of the Act, see the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  See 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> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Preliminary Results of Review</HD> As a result of this review, we preliminarily determine the following net countervailable subsidy rate exists for the POR, January 1, 2023, through December 31, 2023: <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,nj,tp0,i1" CDEF="s25,12"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Company</CHED> <CHED H="1"> Subsidy rate (percent <E T="03">ad valorem</E> <ENT>64.27</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Disclosure</HD> Commerce intends to disclose its calculations and analysis performed to interested parties for these preliminary results within five days of any 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). <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  As discussed in the Preliminary Decision Memorandum, Commerce preliminarily finds the following companies to be cross-owned with JSC Apatit: PhosAgro Public Joint Stock Company; Limited Liability Company PhosAgro-Region; Limited Liability Company PhosAgro-Belgorod; Limited Liability Company PhosAgro-Don; Limited Liability Company PhosAgro-Kuban; Limited Liability Company PhosAgro-Lipetsk; Limited Liability Company PhosAgro-Kursk; Limited Liability Company PhosAgro-Orel; Limited Liability Company PhosAgro-Stavropol; Limited Liability Company PhosAgro-Volga; Limited Liability Company PhosAgro-SeveroZapad; Limited Liability Company PhosAgro-Tambov; and Limited Liability Company PhosAgro-Sibir. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Public Comment</HD> Case briefs or other written comments may be submitted to the Assistant Secretary for Enforcement and Compliance. Pursuant to 19 CFR 351.309(c)(1)(ii), we have modified the deadline for interested parties to submit case briefs to Commerce to no later than 21 days after the date of the publication of this notice. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> Rebuttal briefs, limited to issues raised in the case briefs, may be filed not later than five days after the date for filing case briefs. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> Interested parties who submit case briefs or rebuttal briefs in this proceeding must submit: (1) a table of contents listing each issue; and (2) a table of authorities. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 19 CFR 351.309. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 19 CFR 351.309(d); <E T="03">see also Administrative Protective Order, Service, and Other Procedures in Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Proceedings, 88</E> FR 67069, 67077 (September 29, 2023) ( <E T="03">APO and Service Procedures</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 19 CFR 351.309(c)(2) and (d)(2). </FTNT> As provided under 19 CFR 351.309(c)(2) and (d)(2), in prior proceedings we have encouraged interested parties to provide an executive summary of their briefs that should be limited to five pages total, including footnotes. In this review, we instead request that interested parties provide at the beginning of their briefs a public, executive summary for each issue raised in their briefs. <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> Further, we request that interested parties limit their executive summary of each issue to no more than 450 words, not including citations. We intend to use the executive summaries as the basis of the comment summaries included in the issues and decision memorandum that will accompany the final results in this administrative review. We request that interested parties include footnotes for relevant citations in the executive summary of each issue. Note that Commerce has amended certain of its requirements pertaining to the service of documents in 19 CFR 351.303(f). <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>  We use the term “issue” here to describe an argument that Commerce would normally address in a comment of the Issues and Decision Memorandum. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>   <E T="03">See APO and Service Procedures</E> . </FTNT> Pursuant to 19 CFR 351.310(c), interested parties who wish to request a hearing must submit a ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 14k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━