Silicon Metal From the Lao People's Democratic Republic: Preliminary Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination and Alignment of Final Determination With Final Antidumping Duty Determination

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[C-553-002]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Silicon Metal From the Lao People's Democratic Republic: Preliminary Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination and Alignment of Final Determination With Final Antidumping Duty Determination</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 producers and exporters of silicon metal from the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Laos). The period of investigation (POI) is January 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 26, 2025. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Shane Subler or Laurel Smalley, 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 and (202) 482-3456, respectively. </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 May 21, 2025. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> On June 30, 2025, Commerce postponed the preliminary determination of this investigation, and the revised deadline is now September 22, 2025. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Silicon Metal From Australia, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Norway, and Thailand: Initiation of Countervailing Duty Investigations,</E> 90 FR 21746 (May 21, 2025) ( <E T="03">Initiation Notice</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See Silicon Metal From Australia, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Norway, and Thailand: Postponement of Preliminary Determinations in the Countervailing Duty Investigations,</E> 90 FR 27837 (June 30, 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 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>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Decision Memorandum for the Preliminary Affirmative Determination in the Countervailing Duty Investigation of Silicon Metal from the Lao People's Democratic Republic,” 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 silicon metal. 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 parties commented on the scope of the investigation as it appeared in the <E T="03">Initiation Notice.</E> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See Antidumping Duties; Countervailing Duties, Final Rule,</E> 62 FR 27296, 27323 (May 19, 1997). </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 701 of the Act. For each of the subsidy programs found to be 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>6</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 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> Commerce notes that, in making these findings, it relied, in part, on facts available and, because it finds that one or more respondents did not act to the best of their ability to respond to Commerce's requests for information, it drew an adverse inference where appropriate in selecting from among the facts otherwise available. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> For further information, <E T="03">see</E> the “Use of Facts Otherwise Available and Adverse Inferences” section in the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> sections 776(a) and (b) of the Act. </FTNT> For a full description of the methodology underlying our preliminary determination, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Alignment</HD> As noted in the Preliminary Decision Memorandum, in accordance with section 705(a)(1) of the Act and 19 CFR 351.210(b)(4), Commerce is aligning the final CVD determination with the final determination in the companion antidumping duty (AD) investigation of silicon metal from Laos based on a request made by Ferroglobe USA, Inc. and Mississippi Silicon LLC (collectively, the petitioners). <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> Consequently, the final CVD determination will be issued on the same date as the final AD determination, which is currently scheduled to be issued no later than December 15, 2025, unless postponed. <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Petitioners' Letter, “Petitioners' Request to Align Final Countervailing Duty Determination With the Less-Than-Fair-Value Final Determination,” dated September 12, 2025. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">All-Others Rate</HD> Sections 703(d) and 705(c)(5)(A) of the Act state that Commerce shall determine an estimated all-others rate for companies not individually examined. This rate shall be an amount equal to the weighted average of the estimated subsidy rates established for those companies individually investigated, excluding any zero and <E T="03">de minimis</E> countervailable subsidy rates, and any rates determined entirely under section 776 of the Act. Pursuant to section 705(c)(5)(A)(ii) of the Act, if the individual estimated countervailable subsidy rates established for all exporters and producers individually examined are zero, <E T="03">de minimis,</E> or determined based entirely on facts otherwise available, Commerce may use any reasonable method to establish the estimated subsidy rate for all other producers and/or exporters. Commerce has preliminarily determined the individually estimated subsidy rate for the sole individually examined respondent entirely under section 776 of the Act. Consequently, as a reasonable method, Commerce is determining the all-others rate based on the rate determined for Lao Silicon Co., Ltd. (Lao Silicon), the sole mandatory respondent under investigation, as determined under section 776 of the Act, as this is the only rate available in this proceeding. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> For a full description of the methodology underlying Commerce's analysis, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>   <E T="03">See, e.g., Melamine From Germany: Final Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination,</E> 89 FR 97586 (December 9, 2024); <E T="03">see also Overhead Door Counterbalance Torsion Springs From the People's Republic of China: Final Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination and Final Affirmative Critical Circumstances Determination in Part,</E> 90 FR 39374 (August 15, 2025). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Preliminary Determination</HD> Commerce preliminarily determines that the following estimated countervailable subsidy rates exist: <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,tp0,i1" CDEF="s50,12"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Company</CHED> <CHED H="1"> Subsidy rate (percent <E T="03">ad valorem</E> <ENT I="01">Lao Silicon Co., Ltd.</ENT> <ENT>* 240.00</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">All Others</ENT> <ENT>240.00</ENT> </ROW> <TNOTE>* This rate is based on facts available with adverse inferences.</TNOTE> </GPOTABLE> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Disclosure</HD> Commerce intends to disclose its calculations and analysis performed to interested parties in this preliminary determination within five days of its public announcement, or if there is no public announcement, within five days of the date of this notice in accordance with 19 CFR 351.224(b). Consistent with 19 CFR 351.224(e), Commerce will analyze and, if appropriate, correct any timely allegations of significant ministerial errors by amending the preliminary determination. However, consistent with 19 CFR 351.224(d), Commerce will not consider incomplete allegations that do not address the significance standard under 19 CFR 351.224(g) following the preliminary determination. Instead, Commerce will address such allegations in the final determination together with issues raised in the case briefs or other written comments. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Suspension of Liquidation</HD> In accordance with sections 703(d)(1)( ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 16k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━