Crystalline Silicon Photovoltaic Cells, Whether or Not Assembled Into Modules, From India, Indonesia, and the Lao People's Democratic Republic: Initiation of Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigations

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-533-942, A-560-846, A-553-003]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Crystalline Silicon Photovoltaic Cells, Whether or Not Assembled Into Modules, From India, Indonesia, and the Lao People's Democratic Republic: Initiation of Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigations</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, Department of Commerce. <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable August 6, 2025. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jonathan Schueler (202) 482-9175 (India), Myrna Lobo (202) 482-2371 (Indonesia), and Lilit Astvatsatrian at (202) 482-6412 (the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Laos)), AD/CVD Operations, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">The Petitions</HD> On July 17, 2025, the U.S. Department of Commerce (Commerce) received antidumping duty (AD) petitions concerning imports of crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells, whether or not assembled into modules (solar cells), from India, Indonesia, and Laos filed in proper form on behalf of the Alliance for American Solar Manufacturing and Trade (the petitioner). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The AD Petitions were accompanied by countervailing duty (CVD) petitions concerning imports of solar cells from India, Indonesia, and Laos. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Petitioner's Letter, “Petitions for the Imposition of Antidumping and Countervailing Duties,” dated July 17, 2025 (Petitions). The individual members of the Alliance for American Solar Manufacturing and Trade (the Alliance) are First Solar, Inc., Hanwha Q CELLS USA, Inc. (Qcells), and Mission Solar Energy LLC (Mission Solar). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> Between July 21 and 31, 2025, Commerce requested supplemental information pertaining to certain aspects of the Petitions in supplemental questionnaires. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> Between July 23 and August 4, 2025, the petitioner filed timely responses to these requests for additional information. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Commerce's Letters, “Supplemental Questions,” dated July 21, 2025 (General Issues Questionnaire) and First Country-Specific Supplemental Questionnaires: India Supplemental, Indonesia Supplemental, and Laos Supplemental, dated July 22, 2025; <E T="03">see also</E> Country-Specific Memoranda, “Teleconference with Counsel to the Petitioner,” dated July 31, 2025. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Petitioner's Letters, “Response to the 1st Supplemental Questionnaire Regarding Common Issues and Injury Volume I of the Petition,” dated July 23, 2025 (General Issues Supplement); “First Country-Specific AD Supplemental Responses: First India AD Supplement,” “First Indonesia AD Supplement,” and “First Laos AD Supplement,” dated July 25, 2025; and “Second Country-Specific AD Supplemental Responses: Second India AD Supplement,” “Second Indonesia AD Supplement,” “Second Laos AD Supplement,” dated August 1, 2025 and August 4, 2025. </FTNT> In accordance with section 732(b) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act), the petitioner alleges that imports of solar cells from India, Indonesia, and Laos are being, or are likely to be, sold in the United States at less than fair value (LTFV) within the meaning of section 731 of the Act, and that imports of such products are materially injuring, or threatening material injury to, the solar cells industry in the United States. Consistent with section 732(b)(1) of the Act, the Petitions were accompanied by information reasonably available to the petitioner supporting its allegations. Commerce finds that the petitioner filed the Petitions on behalf of the domestic industry, because the petitioner is an interested party, as defined in section 771(9)(F) of the Act. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> Commerce also finds that the petitioner demonstrated sufficient industry support for the initiation of the requested LTFV investigations. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  The Alliance is an association, the majority of whose members are producers of the domestic like product. Individual members of the Alliance (QCells and Mission Solar) are interested parties within the meaning of section 771(9)(C) of the Act. <E T="03">See</E> Petitions at Volume I (page 2). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> section on “Determination of Industry Support for the Petitions,” <E T="03">infra.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Period of Investigation</HD> Because the Petitions were filed on July 17, 2025, pursuant to 19 CFR 351.204(b)(1), the period of investigation (POI) for the India, Indonesia, and Laos LTFV investigations is July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025. The petitioner argued that Commerce should determine in this investigation that Laos is a non-market economy (NME) within the meaning of section 771(18)(A) of the Act and should calculate normal value (NV) for Laos in accordance with its NME methodology. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> Under the NME methodology for the Laos LTFV investigation, the appropriate POI is January 1, 2025, through June 30, 2025, pursuant to 19 CFR 351.204(b)(1). <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Petitions at Volume IV (pages 2-3, 29 and Exhibit IV-1). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Investigations</HD> The products covered by these investigations are solar cells from India, Indonesia, and Laos. For a full description of the scope of these investigations, <E T="03">see</E> the appendix to this notice. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments on the Scope of the Investigations</HD> On July 21, 2025, Commerce requested information and clarification from the petitioner regarding the proposed scope to ensure that the scope language in the Petitions is an accurate reflection of the products for which the domestic industry is seeking relief. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> On July 23, 2025, the petitioner provided clarifications and revised the scope. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> The description of merchandise covered by these investigations, as described in the appendix to this notice, reflects these clarifications. <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> General Issues Questionnaire at 3-4. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> General Issues Supplement at 2-8. </FTNT> As discussed in the <E T="03">Preamble</E> to Commerce's regulations, we are setting aside a period for interested parties to raise issues regarding product coverage ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> scope). <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> Commerce will consider all scope comments received from interested parties and, if necessary, will consult with interested parties prior to the issuance of the preliminary determinations. If scope comments include factual information, <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> all such factual information should be limited to public information. Commerce requests that interested parties provide at the beginning of their scope comments a public executive summary for each comment or issue raised in their submission. Commerce further requests that interested parties limit their public executive summary of each comment or issue to no more than 450 words, not including citations. Commerce intends to use the public executive summaries as the basis of the comment summaries included in the analysis of scope comments. To facilitate preparation of its questionnaires, Commerce requests that scope comments be submitted by 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) on August 26, 2025, which is 20 calendar days from the signature date of this notice. Any rebuttal comments, which may include factual information, and should also be limited to public information, must be filed by 5:00 p.m. ET on September 5, 2025, which is 10 calendar days from the initial comment deadline. <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>   <E T="03">See Antidumping Duties; Countervailing Duties; Final Rule,</E> 62 FR 27296, 27323 (June 19, 1997) ( <E T="03">Preamble</E> ); <E T="03">see also</E> 19 CFR 351.312. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 19 CFR 351.102(b)(21) (defining “factual information”). </FTNT> Commerce requests that any factual information that parties consider relevant to the scope of these investigations be submitted during that period. However, if a party subsequently finds that additional factual information pertaining to the scope of the investigations may be relevant, the party must contact Commerce and request permission to submit the additional information. All scope comments must be filed simultaneously on the records of the concurrent LTFV and CVD investigations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Filing Requirements</HD> All submissions to Commerce must be filed electronically via Enforcement and Compliance's Antidumping Duty and Countervailing Duty Centralized Electronic Service System (ACCESS), unless an exception applies. <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> An electronically filed document must be received successfully in its entirety by the time and date it is due. <FTNT> <SU>12</SU>   <E T="03">See Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Proceedings: Electronic Filing Procedures; Administrative Protective Order Procedures,</E> 76 FR 39263 (July 6, 2011); <E T="03">see also Enforcement and Compliance: Change of Electronic Filing System Name,</E> 79 FR 69046 (November 20, 2014) for details of Commerce's electronic filing requirements, effective August 5, 2011. Information on using ACCESS can be found at <E T="03">https://access.trade.gov/help.aspx</E> and a handbook can be found at <E T="03">https://access.trade.gov/help/Handbook_on_Electronic_Filing_Proced ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 62k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━