Hard Empty Capsules From the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Final Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[C-552-848]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Hard Empty Capsules From the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: 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 the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Vietnam). The period of investigation (POI) is January 1, 2023, through December 31, 2023. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable December 29, 2025. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jonathan Schueler or Joshua Nixon, 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) 482-9175 or (202) 482-8361, respectively. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On March 31, 2025, Commerce published the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , invited interested parties to comment on the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination,</E> and aligned this countervailing duty (CVD) investigation with the final determination in the less-than-fair value investigation of capsules from Vietnam, in accordance with section 705(a)(1) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act), and 19 CFR 351.210(b)(4). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Hard Empty Capsules from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Preliminary Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination and Alignment of Final Determination with Final Antidumping Duty Determination,</E> 90 FR 14240 (March 31, 2025) ( <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> ), and accompanying Preliminary Decision Memorandum (PDM). </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>2</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>3</SU> <FTREF/> Accordingly, the deadline for this final determination is now December 18, 2025. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Deadlines Affected by the Shutdown of the Federal Government,” dated November 14, 2025. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</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>4</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>4</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 the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” 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. 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>5</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>6</SU> <FTREF/> In the Final Scope Memorandum, Commerce made certain changes to the scope language as it appeared in the <E T="03">Initiation Notice.</E> <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> <E T="03">See</E> Appendix I. <FTNT> <SU>5</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>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: Final Scope Decision Memorandum,” dated concurrently with this notice (Final Scope Memorandum). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</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 May 2025, Commerce conducted on-site verifications of the subsidy information reported by the Government of Vietnam, the Government of Korea, Suheung Vietnam Co., Ltd. (Suheung Vietnam), and Cuu Long Joint Stock Company. We used standard verification procedures, including an examination of relevant sales and accounting records, and original source documents provided by the respondents. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memoranda, “Verification of the Questionnaire Responses of Suheung Vietnam Co., Ltd.,” dated August 12, 2025; “Verification of the Questionnaire Responses of the Government of Vietnam,” dated August 21, 2025; “Verification of the Questionnaire Responses of the Government of Korea,” dated August 20, 2025; and “Verification of the Questionnaire Responses of Cuu Long Joint Stock Company,” dated August 12, 2025. </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 addressed 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>9</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>9</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> In making this final determination, Commerce relied, in part, on facts available, pursuant to section 776(a) of the Act. <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> For a full discussion of our application of facts available, <E T="03">see</E> the “Use of Facts Otherwise Available” section in the Issues and Decision Memorandum. <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> section 776(a) of the Act. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Changes Since the Preliminary Determination</HD> Based on our findings at verification and our review and analysis of the comments received from parties, for this final determination, we made certain changes to the countervailable subsidy rate calculations for Suheung Vietnam and for all other producers/exporters from the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination.</E> For a discussion of these changes, <E T="03">see</E> the Issues and Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">All-Others Rate</HD> In accordance with section 705(c)(1)(B)(i) of the Act, we calculated an individual estimated countervailable subsidy rate for the mandatory respondent, Suheung Vietnam. Section 705(c)(5)(A)(i) of the Act states that, for companies not individually investigated, Commerce will determine an all-others rate equal to the weighted-average countervailable subsidy rates established for exporters and/or producers 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. For this final determination, Suheung Vietnam's subsidy rate is not zero, <E T="03">de minimis,</E> or determined entirely under section 776 of the Act. Consequently, we have assigned the subsidy rate calculated for Suheung Vietnam as the rate for all other producers and/or exporters. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Final ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━