Citric Acid and Certain Citrate Salts From the People's Republic of China: Preliminary Results of the Antidumping Duty Administrative Review; 2023-2024

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-570-937]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Citric Acid and Certain Citrate Salts From the People's Republic of China: Preliminary Results of the Antidumping Duty Administrative Review; 2023-2024</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 RZBC Group Co., Ltd., RZBC Co., Ltd., RZBC Import & Export Co., Ltd., and RZBC (Juxian) Co., Ltd. (collectively, RZBC) did not make sales of citric acid and certain citrate salts (citric acid) from the People's Republic of China (China) at less than normal value (NV) during the period of review (POR) May 1, 2023, through April 30, 2024. Interested parties are invited to comment on these preliminary results of review. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable September 11, 2025. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Luke Caruso, AD/CVD Operations, Office IV, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-2081. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On May 29, 2009, Commerce published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> the antidumping duty order on citric acid from China. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> On May 2, 2024, Commerce published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> a notice of opportunity to request an administrative review of the <E T="03">Order.</E> <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> On July 5, 2024, based on a timely request for an administrative review, Commerce initiated an administrative review of the <E T="03">Order.</E> <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The administrative review covers a single mandatory respondent, RZBC. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Citric Acid and Certain Citrate Salts from Canada and the People's Republic of China: Antidumping Duty Orders,</E> 74 FR 25703 (May 29, 2009) ( <E T="03">Order</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See Antidumping or Countervailing Duty Order, Finding, or Suspended Investigation; Opportunity to Request Administrative Review and Join Annual Inquiry Service List,</E> 89 FR 35778 (May 2, 2024). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See Initiation of Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Administrative Reviews,</E> 89 FR 55567 (July 5, 2024). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Respondent Selection,” dated September 6, 2024. </FTNT> On December 9, 2024, Commerce tolled certain deadlines in this administrative review by ninety days. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> Pursuant to section 751(a)(3)(A) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act), on April 24, 2025, Commerce extended the deadline for these preliminary results until September 5, 2025. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> For a complete description of the events that occurred since the initiation of this review, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> 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> A list of topics discussed in the Preliminary Decision Memorandum is included in an appendix to this notice. In addition, a complete version of the Preliminary Decision Memorandum can be found at <E T="03">https://access.trade.gov/public/FRNoticesListLayout.aspx.</E> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Tolling of Deadlines for Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Proceedings”, dated December 9, 2024. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Extension of Deadline for Preliminary Results of Antidumping Duty Administrative Review,” dated January 4, 2024. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Decision Memorandum for Preliminary Results of the Antidumping Duty Administrative Review of Citric Acid and Certain Citrate Salts from the People's Republic of China; 2023-2024,” 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 this <E T="03">Order</E> is citric acid from China. A full description of the scope of the <E T="03">Order</E> is contained in the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">China-Wide Entity</HD> Commerce's policy regarding the conditional review of the China-wide entity applies to this administrative review. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> Under this policy, the China-wide entity will not be under review unless a party specifically requests, or Commerce self-initiates, a review of the entity. Because no party requested a review of the China-wide entity in this review, the entity is not under review, and the entity's assessment rate ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> 156.87 percent) is not subject to change. <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>   <E T="03">See Antidumping Proceedings: Announcement of Change in Department Practice for Respondent Selection in Antidumping Duty Proceedings and Conditional Review of the Nonmarket Economy Entity in NME Antidumping Duty Proceedings,</E> 78 FR 65963 (November 4, 2013). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>   <E T="03">See Order.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Methodology</HD> Commerce is conducting this review in accordance with section 751(a) of the Act. Export price has been calculated in accordance with section 772(a) of the Act, and NV was calculated in accordance with section 773 of the Act. For a full description of the methodology underlying our conclusions, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Preliminary Results of the Administrative Review</HD> Commerce preliminarily determines that the following estimated weighted-average dumping margin exists for the administrative review covering the period May 1, 2023, through April 30, 2024: <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,nj,tp0,i1" CDEF="s200,15C"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Exporter</CHED> <CHED H="1"> Weighted-average dumping margin (percent) </CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">RZBC Group Co., Ltd., RZBC Co., Ltd., RZBC Import & Export Co., Ltd., and RZBC (Juxian) Co., Ltd</ENT> <ENT>0.00</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Disclosure</HD> Commerce intends to disclose the calculations and analysis that it performed in these preliminary results of review to parties to the proceeding within five days of any public announcement of these preliminary results or, if there is no public announcement, within five days of the date of publication of this notice in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> in accordance with 19 CFR 351.224(b). <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 not later than 21 days after the date of the publication of this notice. <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> Rebuttal briefs, limited to issues raised in the case briefs, may be filed no later than five days after the date for filing case briefs. <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> Interested parties who submit case briefs or rebuttal briefs in this proceeding must submit: (1) a table of contents listing each issue addressed; and (2) a table of authorities. <SU>13</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 19 CFR 351.309. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>12</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,</E> 88 FR 67069, 67077 (September 29, 2023) ( <E T="03">APO and Service Final Rule</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>13</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 19 351.309(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>14</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 we will issue for 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>15</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>14</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>15</SU>   <E T="03">See APO and Service Final Rule.</E> </FTNT> Pursuant to 19 CFR 351.310(c), interested parties who wish to request a hearing must submit a written hearing request to the Assistant Secretary for Enforcement and Compliance, filed electronically via Enforcement and Compliance's Antidumping and Countervailing D ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 17k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━