78678 Federal Register / Vol. 75, No. 241 / Thursday, December 16, 2010 / Notices 

courier. All comments should be 

addressed to the Secretary of Commerce, 

Attention: Wendy J. Frankel, Director, 

Office 8, Antidumping and 

Countervailing Duty Operations, Room 

1870, Import Administration, U.S., 

Department of Commerce, 14th Street 

and Constitution Ave., NW., 

Washington, DC 20230. 

The Department will consider all 

comments received before the close of 

the comment period. The Department 

will not accept comments accompanied 

by a request that part or all of the 

material be treated confidentially 

because of its business proprietary 

nature or for any other reason. All 

comments responding to this notice will 

be a matter of public record and will be 

available for inspection at Import 

Administration’s Central Records Unit 

(Room 7046 of the Herbert C. Hoover 

Building) and on the Department’s Web 

site at http://www.trade.gov/ia/. 

Any questions concerning file 

formatting, document conversion, 

access on the Internet, or other 

electronic filing issues should be 

addressed to Andrew Lee Beller, Import 

Administration Webmaster, at (202) 

482–0866, e-mail address: webmastersupport@ita.doc.gov. 

Dated: December 10, 2010. 

Ronald K. Lorentzen, 

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Import 

Administration. 

[FR Doc. 2010–31644 Filed 12–15–10; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 3510–DS–P 

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE 

International Trade Administration 

Proposed Methodology for 

Respondent Selection in Antidumping 

Proceedings; Request for Comment 

AGENCY: Import Administration, 

International Trade Administration, 

Department of Commerce. 

SUMMARY: The Department of Commerce 

(‘‘the Department’’) seeks public 

comment on its proposed methodology 

for respondent selection and related 

issues. 

DATES: To be assured of consideration, 

comments must be received no later 

than January 18, 2011. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: 

Albert Hsu, Senior Economist, Office of 

Policy, Import Administration, U.S. 

Department of Commerce, 14th Street 

and Constitution Avenue, NW., 

Washington, DC 20230; telephone: (202) 

482–4491. 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 

Background 

When the number of producers/ 

exporters (‘‘companies’’) involved in an 

antidumping investigation or review is 

so large that the Department finds it 

impracticable to examine each company 

individually, the Department has 

statutory authority to limit its 

examination to (1) a sample of 

exporters, producers, or types of 

products that is statistically valid based 

on the information available to the 

administering authority at the time of 

selection, or (2) exporters and producers 

accounting for the largest volume of 

subject merchandise from the exporting 

country that can be reasonably 

examined (see sections 777A(c)(2)(A) 

and (B) of the Tariff Act of 1930, as 

amended (‘‘the Act’’)). The Department 

has, to date, used the second option in 

virtually every one of its proceedings. A 

consequence of this practice is that 

companies under investigation or 

review with relatively smaller import 

volumes have typically not been 

selected by the Department for 

individual examination. 

Sampling companies with varying 

import volumes under section 

777A(c)(2)(A) of the Act is one way to 

remedy this problem. If the Department 

were to select respondents on the basis 

of a sample, the statute requires that the 

sample be ‘‘statistically valid.’’ The 

Department has interpreted this 

requirement as referring to the manner 

in which the Department selects 

respondents and not to the size of the 

sample or precision of the sample 

results. See Brake Rotors From the 

People’s Republic of China: Final 

Results and Partial Rescission of the 

2004/2005 Administrative Review and 

Notice of Rescission of 2004/2005 New 

Shipper Review 71 FR 66304 (Nov. 14, 

2006), and accompanying Issues and 

Decision Memorandum at Comment 1A. 

Therefore, to ensure the statistical 

validity of the samples, in the 

methodology described below, the 

Department proposes to employ a 

sampling technique that (1) is random, 

(2) is stratified, and (3) uses probabilityproportional-to-size (‘‘PPS’’) samples. 

Random selection ensures that every 

company has a chance of being selected 

as a respondent and captures potential 

variability across the population. 

Stratification by import volume ensures 

the participation of companies of 

different import volume in the 

investigation or review, given the small 

samples that would be used. Finally, 

PPS samples ensure that the probability 

of each company being chosen as a 

respondent is proportional to its share 

of imports in its respective stratum. 

Proposed Methodology 

1.1 When To Sample 

Given the benefits of sampling 

described above, where possible, the 

Department proposes to use sampling to 

select respondents rather than limiting 

its examination to companies 

accounting for the largest import 

volume that can be reasonably 

examined. However, the Department 

will, in general, forgo sampling under 

the following circumstances: (1) If, due 

to resource constraints, the Department 

is unable to examine at least three 

companies, (2) when the largest 

companies by import volume account 

for at least 75 percent of total imports, 

or (3) when characteristics of the 

underlying population make it highly 

likely that results obtained from the 

largest possible sample, given resource 

constraints, would be unreasonable to 

represent the population. 

To make a determination under (3) 

above, for a segment of a proceeding in 

which the Department intends to apply 

sampling for respondent selection, the 

Department proposes to announce a tenday period for interested parties to 

comment on the existence of significant 

variation in company characteristics 

that are likely to have a substantial 

effect on the variation in dumping 

margins of the companies in the 

population in question. The comments 

can take into account sampled company 

margins from previous segments of the 

proceeding, if such data exist, that may 

indicate significant variation in the 

individual margins of sampled 

companies. If the Department receives 

any comment, there will be a five-day 

rebuttal period before the Department 

announces its decision on the 

respondent selection method for that 

segment of the proceeding. If the 

Department does not find that selecting 

respondents through sampling is 

appropriate for that particular segment 

based on information and comments on 

the record at the time of respondent 

selection, the Department will choose as 

respondents those companies 

accounting for the largest import 

volume that can be reasonably 

examined, in accordance with section 

777A(c)(2)(B) of the Act. 

1.2 Definition of Population 

Currently, the Department generally 

chooses companies for individual 

examination based on import volumes 

reported in case-specific Customs and 

Border Protection (‘‘CBP’’) import data. It 

also assigns an antidumping duty rate to 

all other companies that are not selected 

for individual examination. The 

Department currently does not require 


srobinson on DSKHWCL6B1PROD with NOTICES
Federal Register / Vol. 75, No. 241 / Thursday, December 16, 2010 / Notices 78679 

any evidence of shipment from a nonselected company before making its 

respondent-selection decision. 

However, in the sampling context, the 

existence of shipments will be required 

in order to both define the population, 

and if the company is selected, establish 

a dumping margin for the company. 

Therefore, the Department will normally 

use CBP data as evidence of shipment, 

and proposes to define the relevant 

population from which to sample as (1) 

all companies subject to investigation 

with shipments of subject merchandise, 

and (2) all companies named in a review 

with shipments of subject merchandise. 

In a non-market economy (‘‘NME’’) 

case, the relevant population should not 

include companies that are a part of the 

NME entity. Since the Department may 

not be able to determine a company’s 

eligibility for a separate rate before 

respondent selection, the Department 

proposes to exclude from the relevant 

population companies that have not 

submitted separate rate applications. 

1.3 Sampling Technique 

The Department proposes to use 

stratified PPS samples. The first step in 

the proposed sampling technique is to 

sort all companies in the relevant 

population from largest to smallest, 

based on import volumes. Second, 

companies would be segregated into a 

number of strata equal to the sample 

size, with each stratum accounting for 

approximately the same share of import 

volume. For example, if the Department 

determines that it may individually 

examine three respondents, the 

companies would be divided into three 

strata, each accounting for 

approximately a third of imports. Third, 

one respondent from each stratum 

would be selected using PPS. If a single 

company accounts for more than 33 

percent or more of imports, that 

company would be assigned its own 

stratum and the remaining companies 

would be divided into two strata 

accounting for an equal share of the 

remaining imports. Then, one 

respondent would be selected from each 

of these strata. If two companies each 

account for more than 33 percent or 

more of imports, each of the two 

companies would be assigned its own 

stratum and one respondent would be 

randomly selected from the remaining 

companies. 

1.4 Calculating and Assigning Rates 

After examination of selected 

respondents by the sampling method, 

the Department will need to assign a 

rate to all non-selected companies. To 

do so, the Department proposes to 

calculate a ‘‘sample rate,’’ which will be 

an average of all selected respondent 

rates, weighted by the import share of 

their corresponding strata. In a market 

economy case, all companies in the 

relevant population who were not 

selected for individual examination 

would receive the sample rate. 

Consistent with the definition of 

‘‘relevant population’’ above, in NME 

cases, only companies in the relevant 

population that qualify for separate rates 

would receive the sample rate; those 

that do not qualify for separate rates 

would receive the NME country-wide 

rate. 

Request for Comments 

In addition to comments on the 

methodology described above, the 

Department requests comments on the 

following issues. First, how should the 

Department address the case in which a 

selected respondent needs to be 

replaced, due to withdrawal or 

disqualification for any reason? 

Examples of disqualified respondents 

include companies in an NME case that 

applied for a separate rate but do not 

qualify for such a rate, and companies 

with shipment of subject merchandize 

in CBP data due to misclassification. 

Second, how should the Department 

treat voluntary respondents in the 

sampling context? Finally, how should 

the Department treat adverse-factsavailable, de minimis, and zero 

antidumping duty rates in its 

calculation of the sample rate? 

Submission of Comments 

As specified above, to be assured of 

consideration, comments must be 

received no later than January 31, 2011. 

All comments must be submitted 

through the Federal eRulemaking Portal 

at http://www.regulations.gov, Docket 

No. ITA–2010–0009, unless the 

commenter does not have access to the 

Internet. Commenters that do not have 

access to the Internet may submit the 

original and two copies of each set of 

comments by mail or hand delivery/ 

courier. All comments should be 

addressed to the Secretary of Commerce, 

Attention: Albert Hsu, Senior 

Economist, Office of Policy, Room 1870, 

Import Administration, U.S., 

Department of Commerce, 14th Street 

and Constitution Ave., NW., 

Washington, DC 20230. 

The Department will consider all 

comments received before the close of 

the comment period. The Department 

will not accept comments accompanied 

by a request that part or all of the 

material be treated confidentially 

because of its business proprietary 

nature or for any other reason. All 

comments responding to this notice will 

be a matter of public record and will be 

available for inspection at Import 

Administration’s Central Records Unit 

(Room 7046 of the Herbert C. Hoover 

Building) and on the Department’s Web 

site at http://www.trade.gov/ia/. 

Any questions concerning file 

formatting, document conversion, 

access on the Internet, or other 

electronic filing issues should be 

addressed to Andrew Lee Beller, Import 

Administration Webmaster, at (202) 

482–0866, e-mail address: webmastersupport@ita.doc.gov. 

Dated: December 10, 2010. 

Ronald K. Lorentzen, 

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Import 

Administration. 

[FR Doc. 2010–31643 Filed 12–15–10; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 3510–DS–P 

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE 

National Oceanic and Atmospheric 

Administration 

RIN 0648–XA088 

Fisheries of the Gulf of Mexico and 

South Atlantic; Southeast Data, 

Assessment, and Review (SEDAR); 

Assessment Process Webinar for 

Highly Migratory Species (HMS) 

Fisheries Sandbar, Dusky, and 

Blacknose Sharks 

AGENCY: National Marine Fisheries 

Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and 

Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 

Commerce. 

ACTION: Notice of SEDAR 21 HMS of 

sandbar, dusky, and blacknose sharks 

assessment webinar. 

SUMMARY: The SEDAR 21 assessments of 

the HMS of sandbar, dusky, and 

blacknose sharks will consist of a series 

of workshops and webinars: a Data 

Workshop, a series of Assessment 

webinars, and a Review Workshop. See 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION. 

DATES: A SEDAR 21 Assessment Process 

webinar will be held on Tuesday, 

January 11, 2011 from 10 a.m. to 

approximately 2 p.m. (Eastern). The 

established times may be adjusted as 

necessary to accommodate the timely 

completion of discussion relevant to the 

assessment process. Such adjustments 

may result in the meeting being 

extended from, or completed prior to 

the time established by this notice. 

ADDRESSES: The meeting will be held 

via webinar. The webinar is open to 

members of the public. Those interested 

in participating should contact Julie 

Neer at SEDAR (See FOR FURTHER

INFORMATION CONTACT) to request an 


srobinson on DSKHWCL6B1PROD with NOTICES