Federal Register: October 7, 2009 (Volume 74, Number 193)
DOCID: fr07oc09-33 FR Doc E9-24231
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
International Trade Administration
NOTICE: NOTICES
DOCID: fr07oc09-33
DOCUMENT ACTION: Request for comments.
SUBJECT CATEGORY:
Expected Non-Market Economy Wages: Request for Comments on 2009 Calculation
DATES: Any comments must be submitted no later than 10 days after publication of this notice.
DOCUMENT SUMMARY:
The Department of Commerce (``Department''') has a longstanding practice of calculating expected nonmarket economy (``NME'') wages for use as the surrogate value for direct labor in antidumping proceedings involving NME countries. These expected NME wages are calculated annually in accordance with the Department's regulations, see 19 CFR 351.408(c)(3). This notice constitutes the Department's 2009 expected NME wages, which were calculated from 2007 data made available in 2009 according to the Department's revised methodology described in the Federal Register notice entitled Antidumping Methodologies: Market Economy Inputs, Expected NonMarket Economy Wages, Duty Drawback; and Request for Comments, 71 FR 61716, Oct. 19, 2006 (hereafter, the Antidumping Methodologies notice). The Department further provides the public with an opportunity to comment on potential clerical errors in the calculation. Id.
SUMMARY:
Expected Non-Market Economy Wages; Request for Comments on 2009 Calculation
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT
Bobby Wong, Senior International Trade Analyst, China/NME Group, Import Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 14th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW., Washington, DC 20230, (202) 4820409.
Background
The Department's regulations generally describe the methodology by
which the Department calculates expected NME wages. For labor, the
Secretary will use regressionbased wage rates reflective of the
observed relationship between wages and national income in market
economy countries. The Secretary will calculate the wage rate to be
applied in nonmarket economy proceedings each year.\1\ The calculation
will be based on current data, and will be made available to the public. See 19 CFR 351.408(c)(3).
\1\ Pursuant to the Antidumping Methodologies Notice, 71 FR
61722, the Department intends to publish the annual revisions of the
expected NME wage rates on its Web site in the fall. Since there is
no fixed deadline for the submission of the relevant country data to
the World Bank and ILO, the Department cannot specify a date certain
by which the revision will be published. We can say, however, that
because not all countries submit their data at the same time and
because the Department must wait until all relevant data is
submitted, publication of the revision will likely take place in late fall.
The Department's expected NME wages are calculated each year in two steps. First, the relationship between hourly wage rates (obtained from the International Labour Organization's (``ILO'') Yearbook of Labour Statistics) and percapita gross national income (``GNI'') (obtained from the World Bank) is estimated using ordinary least squares (``OLS'') regression analysis. Second, the GNI of each of the countries designated by the Department to be an NME is applied to the regression, which yields an expected hourly wage rate for each NME.
The Department published a notice in the Federal Register on October 19, 2006, which detailed its revised methodology for calculating expected NME wages in antidumping proceedings involving NME countries. See the Antidumping Methodologies notice. In that notice, the Department stated that ``{e{time} ach year, the Department's annual calculation will be subject to public notice prior to the adoption of the resulting expected NME wage rates for use in antidumping proceedings. Comment will be requested only with regard to potential clerical errors in the Department's calculation.'' Antidumping Methodology notice, 71 FR 61722. This notice constitutes the Department's 2009 calculation of expected NME wages in Attachment 1, which were calculated from 2007 data made available in 2009 according to the Department's revised methodology described in the Antidumping Methodologies notice. The Department is requesting public comment only on the potential clerical errors in the calculation. Comments with regard to the methodology were addressed in the Antidumping Methodologies notice and will not be considered.
In order to facilitate a full opportunity for comment, and because the underlying data are voluminous, the preliminary results and underlying data for the preliminary 2009 expected NME wages calculation have been posted on the Import Administration Web site (http:// www.ia.ita.doc.gov). This preliminary calculation will not be used for antidumping purposes until it has been finalized by the Department following the public comment period.
Submission of Comments
Persons wishing to comment on clerical errors in the Department's
2009 calculation of expected NME wages presented in Attachment 1 should file
[[Page 51556]]
one signed original and six copies of each set of comments by the date
specified above. The Department will consider all comments regarding
clerical errors received before the close of the comment period.
Comments received after the end of the comment period will be
considered, if possible, but their consideration cannot be assured. The
Department will not accept comments accompanied by a request that a
part or all of the material be treated confidentially because of its
business proprietary nature or for any other reason. The Department
will return such comments and materials to the persons submitting the
comments and will not consider them. All comments responding to this
notice will be a matter of public record and will be available for
inspection and copying at Import Administration's Central Records Unit,
Room 1117. The Department requires that comments be submitted in
written form. The Department recommends submission of comments in
electronic form to accompany the required paper copies. Comments filed
in electronic form should be submitted either by email to the
Webmaster below, or on CDROM, as comments submitted on diskettes are
likely to be damaged by postal radiation treatment. Comments received
in electronic form will be made available to the public in Portable
Document Format (``PDF'') on the Internet at the Import Administration
Web site at the following address: http://www.ia.ita.doc.gov. 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) 4820866,
email address: Webmastersupport@ita.doc.gov.
Dated: September 29, 2009.
Ronald K. Lorentzen,
Acting Assistant Secretary for Import Administration.
Attachment 12009 Calculation of Expected NME Wages
Following the criteria and methodology described in the Antidumping
Methodologies notice, and using the data available to the Department as
of September 22, 2009, the Department used 2006 and 2007 data in
Chapter 5B of the International Labour Statistics (``ILO'') that had
available and suitable ``earnings'' data for 88 entities: Albania,
Andorra, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain,
Belgium, Bermuda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Bulgaria,\2\
Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus,
Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France,
Georgia, Germany, Gibraltar, Guam, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Hong
Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Isle of Man, Israel,
Japan, Jersey, Kazakhstan, Republic of Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia,
Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Macedonia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico,
Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama,
Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar,
Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Seychelles, Singapore, Slovakia,
Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan,
Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Virgin Islands (U.S.), and West Bank and Gaza Strip.
\2\ On August 11, 2008, the United Nations Department of
Economic and Social Affairs published the 4th revision of the
International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic
Activities (``ISIC classification''). Therefore, with respect to the
data selection criteria established in the Antidumping Methodologies
Notice, where more than one record in the ILO database meet the
requirements, the Department has prioritized the most recent update
of the ISIC classification, ISIC Rev.4Cmanufacturing, over
previous revisions. See Antidumping Methodologies Notice, 71 FR 61722.
Within the earnings data set above, for 2006 and 2007, Armenia,
Azerbaijan, China, Georgia, Kyrgyz Republic (Kyrgyzstan), and Moldova,
were not included in the regression because they are designated as NME countries by the Department.\3\
\3\ The Department considers Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, The
People's Republic of China, Georgia, Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova,
Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam to be nonmarket economies.
Of the remaining 82 entities, for the reasons further discussed below, 16 additional entities were excluded from the regression data set.
The Department notes that the earnings data from Switzerland and Paraguay appear to be aberrant, and may be the result of a typographical or reporting error by the ILO Web site, and has thus been excluded from the regression data set.
There were no 2007 GNI data available for Andorra, Bahrain, Bermuda, Cuba, Gibraltar, Guam, Isle of Man, Jersey, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Taiwan, Virgin Islands (U.S.), and West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Department also excluded Bosnia & Herzegovina, as the IFS CPI datum was unavailable to inflate the entities' reported 2006 ILO earnings.
There were no further entities eliminated based on the availability of the 2006 and 2007 earnings, CPI, GNI, or exchange rate data for the remaining 66 entities.
Accordingly, the Department ran its preliminary 2009 expected NME wage regression on the following 66 countries: Albania, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Botswana, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macao, Macedonia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Mongolia, Montenegro, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Seychelles, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Following the data compilation and regression methodology described
in the Antidumping Methodologies notice, and using GNI and wage data
for Base Year 2007, the regression results are: Expected Wages = 0.0004265(GNI)0.2616639.
Expected
2007 GNI wages
Armenia......................................... 2,580.00 1.36
Azerbaijan...................................... 2,710.00 1.42
Belarus......................................... 4,240.00 2.07
China (PRC)..................................... 2,360.00 1.27
Georgia......................................... 2,090.00 1.15
Kyrgyz Republic................................. 610.00 0.52
Moldova......................................... 1,130.00 0.74
Tajikistan...................................... 460.00 0.46
Uzbekistan...................................... 730.00 0.57
Vietnam......................................... 770.00 0.59
The World Bank did not publish a GNI for Turkmenistan.
As stated above, the full preliminary results and underlying data for the 2009 expected NME wages calculation have been posted on the Import Administration Web site (http://ia.ita.doc.gov).