Commerce Drops Indian Land Provision From CVD Subsidy Rate Calculation on Remand

The Commerce Department in Feb. 23 remand results reversed course "under respectful protest" on a 26.5% subsidy rate it calculated for land provision by Indian national authorities in its countervailing duty investigation on granular polytetrafluorethylene resin from India (Gujarat Fluorochemicals Ltd. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00120).

In its final countervailing duty determination, Commerce assigned a 31.89% CVD rate to Gujarat Fluorochemicals (GFL), derived from 10 separate subsidy rates. One of the 10 rates was the 26.5% subsidy rate imposed for a 30-year lease of a land tract by the State Industrial Development Corp. to a GFL affiliate, with Commerce ruling that the 30-year lease to Inox, an exclusive electricity provider for GFL, was for less than adequate remuneration.

Commerce had cited 19 CFR 351.525(b)(6)(iv), which says that, for subsidies received by a related input supplier whose supplies are mainly dedicated to production of the downstream product, Commerce will attribute those subsidies to the affiliates' combined sales. Judge Timothy Stanceu disagreed and ruled in his Jan. 24 remand order that the provision of electricity is not mainly dedicated to the production of the granular PTFE and Commerce misunderstood the production chain (see 2301250035).

Commerce deleted the 26.5% subsidy rate for the SIDC’s provision of land from GFL’s overall subsidy rate calculation, which was then revised down to 5.39%.