Certain Chassis and Subassemblies Thereof From the People's Republic of China: Preliminary Determination of Covered Merchandise Inquiry

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>International Trade Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[A-570-135, C-570-136]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Certain Chassis and Subassemblies Thereof From the People's Republic of China: Preliminary Determination of Covered Merchandise Inquiry</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Enforcement and Compliance, International Trade Administration, Department of Commerce. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In response to a covered merchandise referral by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the U.S. Department of Commerce (Commerce) preliminarily determines that certain merchandise subject to the inquiry imported into in the United States is covered under the Antidumping and Countervailing Duty (AD/CVD) orders on certain chassis and subassemblies thereof from the People's Republic of China (China). </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Applicable January 26, 2026. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jacob Keller, 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) 482-4849. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On April 3, 2025, Commerce initiated a covered merchandise inquiry to determine whether certain merchandise imported by FEMC LLC's, formerly known as AXN Heavy Duty LLC (AXN) from China is covered merchandise subject to the <E T="03">Orders</E> on chassis from China. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See Certain Chassis and Subassemblies Thereof from the People's Republic of China: Notice of Covered Merchandise Referral and Initiation of Covered Merchandise Inquiry,</E> 90 FR 14639 (April 3, 2025) ( <E T="03">Initiation Notice</E> ); <E T="03">see also Certain Chassis and Subassemblies Thereof from the People's Republic of China: Antidumping Duty Order,</E> 86 FR 36093 (July 8, 2021) and <E T="03">Certain Chassis and Subassemblies Thereof from the People's Republic of China: Countervailing Duty Order and Amended Final Affirmative Countervailing Duty Determination,</E> 86 FR 24844 (May 10, 2021), respectively (collectively, the <E T="03">Orders</E> ). </FTNT> On July 30, 2025, Commerce postponed the final determination of this inquiry, and the revised deadline is now December 29, 2025. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Commerce's Letter, “Deadline Extension for Covered Merchandise Final Determination,” dated July 30, 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>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 preliminary determination is now March 9, 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 initiation of this investigation, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> A list of topics included in the Preliminary Decision Memorandum is included as Appendix I to this notice. The Preliminary 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 Preliminary 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, “Certain Chassis and Subassemblies Thereof from the People's Republic of China: Decision Memorandum for the Preliminary Results of Covered Merchandise Inquiry—EAPA Inv. 7839,” dated concurrently with, and hereby adopted by, this notice (Preliminary Decision Memorandum). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Scope of the Orders</HD> The merchandise covered by the <E T="03">Orders</E> are certain chassis and subassemblies from China. For a complete description of the scope of the <E T="03">Orders, see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Merchandise Subject to the Covered Merchandise Inquiry</HD> The merchandise subject to this inquiry are: (1) the axle beams imported by AXN that can be used on chassis, whether (a) incorporated into an axle assembly by AXN by adding Chinese-origin parts; (b) incorporated into an axle assembly by AXN by adding domestically ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> U.S.) sourced parts; (c) incorporated into an axle assembly by AXN by adding a mix of Chinese-origin and domestically sourced parts; and/or (d) not incorporated into an axle assembly by AXN ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> as imported); (2) Slider boxes that can be used on chassis, as imported by AXN; (3) Landing gear sets, as imported by AXN; and (4) Any merchandise imported by AXN that can be used on chassis, including, but not limited to, axle beams, slider boxes, and landing gear leg components/landing gear sets, that, even if considered individual components, were imported by AXN “with or for further assembly with a finished or unfinished chassis” by virtue of their intended sale by AXN to manufacturers for use in the production of completed trailers. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Methodology</HD> Commerce is conducting this covered merchandise inquiry in accordance with section 517 of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended (the Act) and 19 CFR 351.227. For a full description of the methodology underlying Commerce's preliminary results, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Preliminary Determination</HD> Commerce preliminarily determines: (1) the axle beams imported by AXN that can be used on chassis, regardless if incorporated into an axle assembly via scenarios (1)(a)-(c), are covered merchandise; (2) slider boxes that can be used on chassis, as imported by AXN, are covered merchandise; (3) landing gear sets that can be used on chassis, as imported by AXN, are covered merchandise; and (4) any other merchandise considered individual components, such as the landing gear legs, imported by AXN and entered and sold by themselves would not be considered subject merchandise even if the intended sale is to manufacturers for use in the production of completed trailers. For a full description of the methodology underlying our conclusions, <E T="03">see</E> the Preliminary Decision Memorandum. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Suspension of Liquidation</HD> As stated above, Commerce preliminarily determines that AXN's imported axle beams, slider boxes, and landing gear sets for use on chassis are subject merchandise. These affirmative in-scope findings are importer-specific to AXN pursuant to 19 CFR 351.227(m)(1)(i). Therefore, in accordance with 19 CFR 351.227(l)(2), Commerce will direct CBP to: (1) continue the suspension of liquidation of previously suspended entries and apply the applicable AD and CVD cash deposit rates; (2) begin the suspension of liquidation and require a cash deposit of estimated duties, at the applicable rate, for each unliquidated entry of the product not yet suspended, entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption on or after April 3, 2025, the date of publication of the notice of initiation of this covered merchandise inquiry in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> <E T="03">;</E> and (3) begin the suspension of liquidation and require a cash deposit of estimated duties, at the applicable rate, for each unliquidated entry of the product not yet suspended, entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption prior to April 3, 2025. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See Initiation Notice</E> . </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Public Comment</HD> Case briefs or other written comments may be submitted to the Assistant Secretary for Enforcement and Compliance. Pursuant to 19 CFR 351.227(d)(3) interested parties may submit case briefs no later than 14 days after the date of publication of this notice. Rebuttal briefs, limited to issues raised in the case briefs, may be filed not later than seven days after the date of filing for case briefs. As provided under 19 CFR 351.309(c)(2)(iii) and (d)(2)(iii), we request that interested parties provide at the beginning of their briefs a public, executive summary for each issue raised in their briefs. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> Further, we request that interested parties limit their executive summary of each issue to no more than 450 words, not including citations. We intend to use the executive summaries as the basis of the comment summaries included in the issues and decision memorandum that will accompany the final determination in this investigation. We request that interested parties include footnotes for relevant citations in the executive summary of each issue. Note that Commerce has amended certain of its requirements pertaining to the service of documents in 19 CFR 351.303(f). <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  We use the term “issue” here to describe an argument that Commerce would normally address in a comment of the Issues and Decision Memorandum. </FTNT> <FT ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 12k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━