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

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-533-934]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Hard Empty Capsules From India: 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 imports of hard empty capsules (capsules) from India 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 (POI) October 1, 2023, to September 30, 2024. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable December 29, 2025. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Joseph Molokwu or 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) 482-8043 or (202) 482-2081, respectively. </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 India, in which it also postponed the final determination until October 14, 2025. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> On September 5, 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 India: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value, Postponement of Final Determination and Extension of Provisional Measures,</E> 90 FR 22699 (May 29, 2025) ( <E T="03">Preliminary Determination),</E> and accompanying Preliminary Decision Memorandum (PDM). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Post-Preliminary Analysis for the Affirmative Determination in the Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigation of Hard Empty Capsules from India,” dated September 5, 2025 (Post-Preliminary Analysis). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Notification of Deadlines for the Submission of Case and Rebuttal Briefs,” dated September 15, 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 results 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 Commerce published 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 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 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 in the Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigation of Hard Empty Capsules from India,” 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 India. 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 notice (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 Associated Capsules Private Limited (ACG India) and HealthCaps India Limited (HIL). <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> We used standard verification procedures, including an examination of relevant sales and accounting records, and original source documents provided by ACG India and HIL. <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memoranda, “Verification of the Sales and Cost Responses of ACG Associated Capsules Private Limited in the Less Than Fair Value Investigation of Hard Empty Capsules from India,” dated September 15, 2025, “Verification of the Constructed Export Price Sales of ACG Associated Capsules Private Limited's U.S. Affiliate ACG North America LLC in the Less Than Fair Value Investigation of Hard Empty Capsules from India,” dated September 15, 2025, and “Verification of the Sales and Cost Responses of HealthCaps India Limited in the Less Than Fair Value Investigation of Hard Empty Capsules from India,” dated September 15, 2025. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Analysis of Comments Received</HD> All issues raised in the case briefs submitted by interested parties 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 calculations for ACG India and HIL since the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> and Post-Preliminary Analysis. In addition, Commerce has relied on adverse facts available under sections 776(a) of the Act for ACG India. 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 exporters and producers individually investigated, excluding any zero and <E T="03">de minimis</E> dumping margins, and any margins determined entirely under section 776 of the Act. Commerce calculated individual estimated weighted-average dumping margins for ACG India and HIL that are not zero, <E T="03">de minimis,</E> or based entirely on facts otherwise available. Publicly-ranged total U.S. sales values are not available for each of the companies examined in this investigation. Therefore, Commerce calculated the estimated weighted-average dumping margin for all-other producers and exporters using a simple average of the estimated weighted-average dumping margins calculated for the examined respondents. <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>  With two respondents under examination, Commerce normally calculates: (A) a weighted-average of the estimated weighted-average dumping margins calculated for the exa ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━