Polypropylene Corrugated Boxes From the People's Republic of China: Final Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-570-207]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Polypropylene Corrugated Boxes From the People's Republic of China: 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 polypropylene corrugated boxes (corrugated boxes) from the People's Republic of China (China) are being, or is likely to be, sold in the United States at less-than-fair-value (LTFV). The period of investigation (POI) is July 1, 2024, through December 31, 2024. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable January 22, 2026. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Dan Alexander, 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) 482-4313. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On August 28, 2025, Commerce published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> in this investigation and invited interested parties to comment. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> We received no comments regarding the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination;</E> therefore, no decision memorandum accompanies this notice. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Polypropylene Corrugated Boxes from the People's Republic of China: Preliminary Affirmative Determination of Sales at Less Than Fair Value,</E> 90 FR 19182 (August 28, 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 January 15, 2026. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Deadlines Affected by the Shutdown of the Federal Government,” dated November 17, 2025. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Memorandum, “Tolling of all Case Deadlines,” dated November 24, 2025. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Investigation</HD> The products covered by this investigation are corrugated boxes from China. For a complete description of the scope of this investigation, <E T="03">see</E> the appendix to this notice. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope Comments</HD> We received no comments from interested parties on the scope of the investigation as it appeared in the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination.</E> Therefore, we made no changes to the scope of the investigation. <HD SOURCE="HD1">China-Wide Entity and Use of Adverse Facts Available (AFA)</HD> For the purposes of this final determination, consistent with the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination,</E> <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> we relied solely on the application of AFA for the China-wide entity, pursuant to sections 776(a) and (b) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act). Further, because no companies are eligible for a rate separate from the China-wide entity, we continue to find that all Chinese producers or exporters of corrugated boxes are part of the China-wide entity. Because no interested parties submitted comments on the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination,</E> we made no changes to our analysis or to the China-wide entity's dumping margin for the final determination. A detailed discussion of our application of AFA is provided in the <E T="03">Preliminary Determination.</E> <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">See Preliminary Determination</E> PDM at 3-8. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Verification</HD> Because no companies participated in this investigation, Commerce was unable to select respondents; thus, we did not conduct verification. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See Preliminary Determination,</E> 90 FR at 41989. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Combination Rates</HD> Because no Chinese exporters qualified for a separate rate, producer/exporter combination rates were not calculated for this final determination. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Final Determination</HD> The final estimated weighted-average dumping margin is as follows: <GPOTABLE COLS="3" OPTS="L2,nj,tp0,i1" CDEF="s50,16C,30C"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Exporter and producer</CHED> <CHED H="1"> Weighted-average <ENT>* 83.64</ENT> <ENT>82.21</ENT> </ROW> <TNOTE>* Rate based on facts available with adverse inferences</TNOTE> </GPOTABLE> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Disclosure</HD> Normally, Commerce will disclose to the parties in a proceeding the calculations performed in connection with a final determination within five days of any public announcement or, if there is no public announcement, within five days of the date of publication of the notice of final determination in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , in accordance with 19 CFR 351.224(b). However, because Commerce continues to find that all Chinese producers and exporters of corrugated boxes are part of the China-wide entity and continues to rely solely on the application of AFA for the China-wide entity, there are no calculations to disclose for this final determination. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Continuation of Suspension of Liquidation</HD> In accordance with section 735(c)(1)(B) of the Act, Commerce will instruct U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to continue to suspend liquidation of subject merchandise, as described in the appendix to this notice, entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption on or after August 28, 2025, which is the date of publication of the affirmative <E T="03">Preliminary Determination</E> in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , at the cash deposit rate indicated above. Pursuant to section 735(c)(1)(B)(ii) of the Act and 19 CFR 351.210(d), we will instruct CBP to require a cash deposit for such entries of merchandise equal to the amount by which the normal value exceeds the U.S. price as follows: (1) for all Chinese producers or exporters of subject merchandise, the cash deposit rate will be equal to the estimated dumping margin established for the China-wide entity, adjusted for the subsidy offset as appropriate; and (2) for all third country exporters of subject merchandise, the cash deposit rate is also the cash deposit rate applicable to the China-wide entity, adjusted for the subsidy offset as appropriate. These cash deposit requirements will remain in effect until further notice. To determine the antidumping duty cash deposit rate, Commerce normally adjusts the estimated weighted-average dumping margin by the amount of domestic subsidy pass-through and export subsidies determined in a companion countervailing duty (CVD) proceeding. Accordingly, where Commerce has made a final affirmative determination of countervailable export subsidies, Commerce offsets the estimated weighted-average dumping margin by the appropriate CVD rate. Commerce has continued to adjust the cash deposit rate for export subsidies found in the companion CVD investigation by the appropriate export subsidy rate as indicated in the above chart. If the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) makes a final affirmative determination of injury due to both dumping and subsidies, then the cash deposit rate will be revised effective on the date of the imposition of final measures, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the date of publication of the ITC's final affirmative determination in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , to be the estimated weighted-average dumping margin adjusted for export subsidies and domestic subsidy pass-through, as appropriate. <HD SOURCE="HD1">U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) Notification</HD> In accordance with section 735(d) of the Act, we will notify the ITC of our final affirmative determination of sales at LTFV. We will allow the ITC access to all privileged and business proprietary information in our files, provided the ITC confirms that it will not disclose such information, either publicly or under an administrative protective order (APO), without the written consent of the Assistant Secretary for Enforcement and Compliance. Because the final determination in this proceeding is affirmative, in accordance with section 735(b)(2) of the Act, the ITC will make its final determination as to whether the domestic industry in the United States is materially injured, or threatened with material injury, by reason of imports of corrugated boxes from China no later than 45 days after our final determination. If the ITC determines that material injury or threat of material injury does not exist, the proceeding will be terminated and all cash deposits will be refunded. If the ITC determines that such injury does exist, Commerce intends to issue an antidumping duty order, in accordance with section 736(a) of the Act, directing CBP to assess, upon further instruction by Commerce, antidumping duties on all imports of the subject merchandise that are entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption on or after the effective date of the suspension of liquidation, as discussed above in the “Continuation of Suspension of Liquidation” ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 14k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━