Hard Empty Capsules From Brazil: Final Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-351-864]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Hard Empty Capsules From Brazil: Final Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value</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) determines that hard empty capsules (capsules) from Brazil are being, or are likely to be, sold in the United States at less than fair value (LTFV), as provided in section 735 of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act), for the period of investigation October 1, 2023, through September 30, 2024. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable December 29, 2025. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Gemma Larsen, AD/CVD Operations, Office I, Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 482-8125. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On May 29, 2025, Commerce published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> its preliminary affirmative determination in the LTFV investigation of capsules from Brazil, in which it also postponed the final determination until October 14, 2025. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> On August 7, 2025, Commerce issued a post-preliminary analysis memorandum in which it made certain changes to its differential pricing analysis. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> We invited interested parties to comment on the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> and changes to the differential pricing analysis. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Hard Empty Capsules from Brazil: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value, Postponement of Final Determination, and Extension of Provisional Measures,</E> 90 FR 22688 (May 29, 2025) ( <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> ), and accompanying Preliminary Decision Memorandum. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Post-Preliminary Analysis for the Affirmative Preliminary Determination in the Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigation of Hard Empty Capsules from Brazil,” dated August 7, 2025. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Notification of Deadlines for submission of Case and Rebuttal Briefs,” dated August 12, 2025. </FTNT> Due to the lapse in appropriations and Federal Government shutdown, on November 14, 2025, Commerce tolled all deadlines in administrative proceedings by 47 days. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> Additionally, due to a backlog of documents that were electronically filed via Enforcement and Compliance's Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Centralized Electronic Service System (ACCESS) during the Federal Government shutdown, on November 24, 2025, Commerce tolled all deadlines in administrative proceedings by an additional 21 days. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> Accordingly, the deadline for this final determination is now December 18, 2025. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Deadlines Affected by the Shutdown of the Federal Government,” dated November 14, 2025. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Tolling of all Case Deadlines,” dated November 24, 2025. </FTNT> A summary of the events that occurred since the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination,</E> as well as a full discussion of the issues raised by parties for this final determination, may be found in the Issues and Decision Memorandum. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> The Issues and Decision Memorandum is a public document and is on file electronically via ACCESS. ACCESS is available to registered users at <E T="03">https://access.trade.gov.</E> In addition, a complete version of the Issues and Decision Memorandum can be accessed directly at <E T="03">https://access.trade.gov/public/FRNoticesListLayout.aspx.</E> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Issues and Decision Memorandum for the Final Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value in the Investigation of Hard Empty Capsules from Brazil,” dated concurrently with, and hereby adopted by, this notice (Issues and Decision Memorandum). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Investigation</HD> The products covered by this investigation are capsules from Brazil. For a complete description of the scope of this investigation, <E T="03">see</E> Appendix I. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope Comments</HD> In the Preliminary Scope Memorandum, we set aside a period of time for parties to raise issues regarding product coverage ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> scope) in scope-specific case briefs or other written comments. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> We received scope case and rebuttal briefs from multiple interested parties. For a summary of the product coverage comments and rebuttal responses submitted to the record for this final determination, and accompanying discussion and analysis of all comments timely received, <E T="03">see</E> the Final Scope Memorandum. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> In the Final Scope Memorandum, Commerce determined that it is modifying the scope language as it appeared in the <E T="03">Initiation Notice.</E> <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> <E T="03">See</E> Appendix I. <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Less-Than-Fair-Value and Countervailing Duty Investigations of Hard Empty Capsules from Brazil, the People's Republic of China, India, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Scope Comments Decision Memorandum for the Preliminary Determination,” dated March 24, 2025 (Preliminary Scope Memorandum). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Less-Than-Fair-Value and Countervailing Duty Investigations of Hard Empty Capsules from Brazil, the People's Republic of China, India, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Final Scope Decision Memorandum,” dated concurrently with this memorandum (Final Scope Memorandum). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>   <E T="03">See Hard Empty Capsules From Brazil, the People's Republic of China, India, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Initiation of Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigations,</E> 89 FR 91684 (November 20, 2024) ( <E T="03">Initiation Notice</E> ). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Verification</HD> Commerce conducted verification of the information relied upon in making its final determination in this investigation, in accordance with section 782(i) of the Act. Specifically, we conducted on-site verifications of the sales and cost information submitted by ACG do Brasil S.A. (ACG Brazil), for use in our final determination. We used standard verification procedures, including an examination of relevant sales and accounting records, and original source documents provided by ACG Brazil. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Analysis of Comments Received</HD> All issues raised in the case brief submitted by ACG Brazil in this investigation are addressed in the Issues and Decision Memorandum. A list of the issues addressed in the Issues and Decision Memorandum is attached to this notice as Appendix II. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Changes Since the Preliminary Determination</HD> We made certain changes to the dumping margin calculation for ACG Brazil since the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> and Post-Preliminary Analysis. For a discussion of these changes, <E T="03">see</E> the Issues and Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">All-Others Rate</HD> Section 735(c)(5)(A) of the Act provides that Commerce shall determine an estimated all-others rate for all exporters and producers not individually examined. This rate shall be an amount equal to the weighted average of the estimated weighted-average dumping margins established for producers and exporters individually investigated, excluding any zero and <E T="03">de minimis</E> margins, and any margins determined entirely under section 776 of the Act. Commerce calculated an individual estimated weighted-average dumping margin for ACG Brazil, the only individually examined producer/exporter in this investigation, that is not zero, <E T="03">de minimis,</E> or based entirely on facts otherwise available. Therefore, we assigned the estimated weighted-average dumping margin that we calculated for ACG Brazil to all other producers and exporters, pursuant to section 735(c)(5)(A) of the Act. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Final Determination</HD> Commerce determines that the following estimated weighted-average dumping margins exist:  <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>  To determine the cash deposit rate, Commerce normally adjusts the estimated weighted-average dumping margin by the amount of export subsidies countervailed in a companion countervailing duty (CVD) proceeding, when CVD provisional measures are in effect. Accordingly, where Commerce has made a final affirmative determination for countervailable export subsidies, Commerce offsets the estimated weighted-average dumping margin by the appropriate CVD rate. However, in the final determination of the companion CVD investigation of capsules from Brazil, we found no export subsidies. <E T="03">See</E> unpublished <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notice entitled, “Hard Empty Capsules from Brazil: Final Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination,” signed and dated concurrently with this <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notice. Therefore, Commerce has not adjusted the antidumping duty cash deposit rate for export subsidies in the companion CVD investigation. </FTNT> <GPOTABLE COLS="3" OPTS="L2,nj,tp0,i1" CDEF="s50,15,12"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Producer/exporter</CHED> <CHED H="1"> Weighted-average <ENT I="01">ACG do Brasil S.A</ENT> <ENT>77.63</ENT> <ENT>77.63</ENT> </ROW ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━