Honey From the People's Republic of China: Preliminary Results and Partial Rescission of Antidumping Duty Administrative Review

The Department of Commerce ("Department") is currently conducting the aligned semi-annual 2005-2006 new shipper review and 2005-2006 administrative review of the antidumping duty order on honey from the People's Republic of China ("PRC"). The period of review ("POR") for both the new shipper review and administrative review is December 1, 2005, through November 30, 2006. Five respondents reported that they had no exports or sales of the subject merchandise during the POR; therefore, we are preliminarily rescinding our review of these companies. We preliminarily determine that Wuhu Qinshi Tangye Co., Ltd. ("Wuhu Qinshi"); Jiangsu Light Industry Products Imp & Exp (Group) Corp. ("Jiangsu Light"); Qinhuangdao Municipal Dafeng Industrial Co., Ltd. ("QMD"); and Inner Mongolia Altin Bee-Keeping ("IMA") have failed to cooperate by not acting to the best of their ability to comply with our requests for information and, as a result, should be assigned a rate based on adverse facts available. Additionally, we have preliminarily determined that, because the Department has not calculated antidumping duty margins in this segment of the proceeding, the two separate rate companies in the administrative review will be assigned the separate rate margin from the most recent segment of this proceeding in which such a rate was calculated, which in this case is the less than fair value ("LTFV") investigation. Finally, we have preliminarily determined that QHD Sanhai Honey Co., Ltd. ("QHD Sanhai"), the new shipper respondent, did not make sales of subject merchandise to the United States below normal value. If these preliminary results are adopted in our final results of this review, we will instruct U.S. Customs and Border Protection ("CBP") to assess antidumping duties on all appropriate entries of subject merchandise during the POR. Interested parties are invited to comment on these preliminary results. We will issue the final results no later than 120 days from the date of publication of this notice.