Hard Empty Capsules From India: Final Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[C-533-935]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Hard Empty Capsules From India: Final Affirmative Countervailing 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) determines that countervailable subsidies are being provided to producers and exporters of hard empty capsules (capsules) from India. The period of investigation (POI) is April 1, 2023, through March 31, 2024. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable December 29, 2025. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Katherine Smith or Gorden Struck, 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) 482-0557 or (202) 482-8151, respectively. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On March 31, 2025, Commerce published <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> and invited interested parties to comment. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> In the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination,</E> and in accordance with section 705(a)(1) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act), and 19 CFR 351.210(b)(4), Commerce aligned the final countervailing duty (CVD) determination with the final determination in the less-than-fair-value investigation of capsules from India. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Hard Empty Capsules from India: Preliminary Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination and Alignment of Final Determination With Final Antidumping Duty Determination,</E> 90 FR 14237 (March 31, 2025) ( <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> ), and accompanying Preliminary Decision Memorandum (PDM). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See Preliminary Determination,</E> 90 FR 14238. </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>3</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>4</SU> <FTREF/> Accordingly, the deadline for this final determination is now December 18, 2025. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Deadlines Affected by the Shutdown of the Federal Government,” dated November 14, 2025. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Tolling of all Case Deadlines,” dated November 24, 2025. </FTNT> For a complete description of the events that followed the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination, see</E> the Issues and Decision Memorandum. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> The Issues and Decision Memorandum is a public document and is made available to the public 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>5</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Issues and Decision Memorandum for the Final Affirmative Determination of the Countervailing Duty 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 hard empty capsules from India. For a complete description of the scope of the 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>6</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>7</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>8</SU> <FTREF/> <E T="03">See</E> Appendix I. <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Less-Than-Fair-Value Investigations of Hard Empty Capsules from Brazil, the People's Republic of China, India, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Countervailing Duty Investigations from Brazil, the People's Republic of China, India, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Preliminary Scope Decision Memorandum,” dated March 24, 2025 (Preliminary Scope Memorandum). </FTNT> <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: Final Scope Decision Memorandum,” dated concurrently with this notice (Final Scope Memorandum). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</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 Countervailing Duty Investigations,</E> 89 FR 91680 (November 20, 2024) ( <E T="03">Initiation Notice</E> ). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Verification</HD> As provided in section 782(i) of the Act, in July and August 2025, Commerce conducted verification of the subsidy information reported by ACG Associated Capsules Private Limited (ACPL) and its affiliates, ACG Pam Pharma Technologies Private Limited (ACG PAM) and ACG Universal Capsules Private Limited (AUCPL) (collectively, ACG). <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Verification of the Questionnaire Responses of ACG Associated Capsules Private Limited,” dated August 21, 2025 (ACG Verification Report). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Analysis of Subsidy Programs and Comments Received</HD> The subsidy programs under investigation, and the issues raised in the case and rebuttal briefs by parties in this investigation, are discussed in the Issues and Decision Memorandum. For a list of the issues raised by parties, and to which we responded in the Issues and Decision Memorandum, <E T="03">see</E> Appendix II. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Methodology</HD> Commerce conducted this investigation in accordance with section 701 of the Act. For each of the subsidy programs found to be countervailable, Commerce 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>10</SU> <FTREF/> For a full description of the methodology underlying our final determination, <E T="03">see</E> the Issues and Decision Memorandum. <FTNT> <SU>10</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> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Changes Since the Preliminary Determination</HD> Based on our review and analysis of the information received during verification and comments received from parties, for this final determination, we made certain changes to the countervailable subsidy rate calculations for ACG, and for all other producers/exporters. For a discussion of these changes, <E T="03">see</E> the Issues and Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">All-Others Rate</HD> Section 705(c)(5)(A) of the Act provides that in a final determination, Commerce shall determine an estimated all-others rate for companies not individually examined equal to the weighted average of the estimated countervailable subsidy rates established for exporters and producers individually examined, excluding any zero or de minimis countervailable subsidy rates and any rates based entirely under section 776 of the Act (facts available). If the individual estimated countervailable subsidy rates established for all exporters and producers individually examined are zero, de minimis, or determined entirely under section 776 of the Act, section 705(c)(5)(A)(ii) of the Act provides that Commerce may use any reasonable method to establish an estimated all-others countervailable subsidy rate for exporters and producers not individually investigated, including averaging the weighted average countervailable subsidy rates determined for the exporters and producers individually investigated. In this investigation, we continue to calculate an individual total net countervailable subsidy rate for ACG, 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 and there are no other countervailable subsidy rates on the record. Given these facts, Commerce has determined that a reasonable method for establishing the estimated all-others' countervailable subsidy rate is to assign ACG's estimated countervailable subsidy rate to all other producers and exporters. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Final Determination</HD> Commerce determines that the following estimated net counterva ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━