Methylene Diphenyl Diisocyanate From the People's Republic of China: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less-Than-Fair-Value, Postponement of Final Determination, and Extension of Provisional Measures

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-570-200]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Methylene Diphenyl Diisocyanate From the People's Republic of China: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less-Than-Fair-Value, Postponement of Final Determination, and Extension of Provisional Measures</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 methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) from the People's Republic of China (China) is being, or is likely to be, sold in the United States at less-than-fair-value (LTFV). The period of investigation (POI) is July 1, 2024, through December 31, 2024. Interested parties are invited to comment on this preliminary determination. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable September 16, 2025. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Kayden Jenson or Christopher Maciuba, AD/CVD Operations, Office II, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-0967 or (202) 482-0413, respectively. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> This preliminary determination is made in accordance with section 773(b) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act). Commerce published the notice of initiation of this investigation on March 11, 2025. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> On July 14, 2025, Commerce postponed the deadline to issue the preliminary determination of this investigation until September 10, 2025. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Methylene Diphenyl Diisocyanate from the People's Republic of China: Initiation of Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigation,</E> 90 FR 11710 (March 11, 2025) ( <E T="03">Initiation Notice</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See Methylene Diphenyl Diisocyanate from the People's Republic of China: Postponement of Preliminary Determination in the Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigation,</E> 90 FR 31163 (July 14, 2025). </FTNT> For a complete description of the events that followed the initiation of this investigation, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> A list of topics included 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>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Decision Memorandum for the Preliminary Determination in the Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigation of Methylene Diphenyl Diisocyanate 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 product covered by this investigation is MDI 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>4</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>5</SU> <FTREF/> No interested party commented on the scope of the investigation as it appeared in the <E T="03">Initiation Notice.</E> Therefore, Commerce is not preliminarily modifying the scope language as it appeared in the <E T="03">Initiation Notice. See</E> the scope in Appendix I to this notice. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See Antidumping Duties; Countervailing Duties, Final Rule,</E> 62 FR 27296, 27323 (May 19, 1997) ( <E T="03">Preamble</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">See Initiation Notice.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Methodology</HD> Commerce is conducting this investigation in accordance with section 731 of the Act. In addition, 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. For the non-examined separate rate companies, Commerce has preliminarily relied on the simple average of the dumping margins alleged in the Petition. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> For a full description of the methodology underlying Commerce's preliminary determination, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">Id.,</E> and accompanying Initiation Checklist at “Estimated Margins.” </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Separate Rates</HD> We preliminarily granted a separate rate to certain respondents that we did not select for individual examination. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> In calculating the rate for non-individually examined separate rate respondents in a non-market economy LTFV investigation, Commerce normally looks to section 735(c)(5)(A) of the Act, which pertains to the calculation of the all-others rate in a market economy LTFV investigation, for guidance. Pursuant to section 735(c)(5)(A) of the Act, normally this rate shall be an amount equal to the weighted-average of the estimated weighted-average dumping margins established for those companies individually examined, excluding zero and <E T="03">de minimis</E> dumping margins, and any dumping margins based entirely under section 776 of the Act. The statute further provides that, where all margins are zero, <E T="03">de minimis,</E> or based entirely on facts available, Commerce may use “any reasonable method” for assigning the rate to non-selected respondents. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Preliminary Decision Memorandum for additional details. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> section 735(c)(5)(B) of the Act. </FTNT> In cases where no weighted-average dumping margins other than zero, <E T="03">de minimis,</E> or determined wholly under section 776 of the Act have been established for individually examined entities, in accordance with section 735(c)(5)(B) of the Act, Commerce typically calculates a simple average of the dumping margins alleged in the petition and applies the result to all other separate rate entities not individually examined. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> The simple average of the dumping margins alleged in the Petition in this investigation is 376.12 percent. <FTREF/> <SU>10</SU> <E T="03">See</E> the table below in the “Preliminary Determination” section of this notice. <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>   <E T="03">See, e.g., Certain Pea Protein from the People's Republic of China: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value, Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Critical Circumstances, Postponement of Final Determination, and Extension of Provisional Measures,</E> 89 FR 10038 (February 13, 2024), unchanged in <E T="03">Certain Pea Protein from the People's Republic of China: Final Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value and Final Affirmative Critical Circumstances Determination,</E> 89 FR 55559 (July 5, 2024). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Petition SQR at Exhibit II-S16. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Combination Rates</HD> In the <E T="03">Initiation Notice,</E> Commerce stated that it would calculate producer/exporter combination rates for the respondents that are eligible for a separate rate in this investigation. <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> Policy Bulletin 05.1 describes this practice. <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>   <E T="03">See Initiation Notice,</E> 90 FR at 11714. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>12</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 weighted-average dumping margins exist: <GPOTABLE COLS="3" OPTS="L2,nj,tp0,i1" CDEF="s50,r50,15"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Producer</CHED> <CHED H="1">Exporter</CHED> <CHED H="1"> Estimated weighted-average dumping margins <ENT I="01">Covestro Polymers (China) Co., Ltd</ENT> <ENT>Covestro Polymers (China) Co., Ltd</ENT> <ENT>376.12</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Wanhua Chemical Group Co., Ltd</ENT> <ENT>Shandong Mingko Co., Ltd</ENT> <ENT>376.12</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">China-wide Entity</ENT> <ENT/> <ENT>* 511.75</ENT> </ROW> <TNOTE>* This rate is based on facts available with adverse inferences.</TNOTE> </GPOTABLE> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Suspension of Liquidation and Cash Deposit Requirements</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 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━