https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-trade-spat-canada-trees-172036654.html
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@Michael_Haas @Jim_Schumacher @william_giguere @Nic_Wilson @Craig_Webb
is there a lobbying entity in Washington from the Wood community lobbying for or against these tariffs? This is an artifact of the Trump administration from 2017, and 3 years later the prices plummeted and then sky rocketed. Is the Biden administration open to reconsidering the tariffs?
"The Trump administration slapped tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber in 2017, saying Canada’s industry is unfairly subsidized. While the move supports U.S. producers, it adds to costs for domestic builders who get more than a quarter of their lumber from their northern neighbor.
“If demand were to soften, then people are going to have to decide whether they want to finance duties or just reduce their production capacity,” Lalonde said. “The duties are effectively forcing those hard decisions.”"
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Don’t blame Trump; this passing match is almost 30 years old
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In the past couple of years the US National Association of Home Builders has been lobbying hard to get rid of the duties, which is a new development. That is the only actively dissenting voice.
Many US sawmills and lumber buyers do not support the duty (which mostly benefits US timberland owners) but are not organized to campaign against the US Lumber Coalition.
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@Nadia Leading up to these 2017 tariffs there was no word in the market about any involvement from trump or Washington, just reports of the “unfair subsidies” in Canada. The tariff levels appeared to the output of some calculation dating back 30 years @Matt_Layman. But yet… when when we turned on main stream media we’d see “The Trump administration slapped tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber”.
Wish we had a neutral place like Pakira back then. Reporting the facts from the front lines!
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@Matt_Layman @Madison_s_Lumber_Rep
What role does the president play in deciding lumber tariffs, if any aside from taking credit? Lumber tariffs are mostly based on forest land price differences between US and Canada right?
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Tariff Reform Coalition established under the National Foreign Trade Council in 2019 following Donald Trumps war on trade. It consists of roughly 60 national trade associations in Washington, DC in manufacturing, retail, distribution and the agriculture community representing tens of thousands of companies involved in trade in one way or another. These include such companies as GM, Ford, Walmart, and from many industries including the American builders associations. You can google them online and download their advocacy brief on these subjects as to the dangers of these tariffs to the American economic and world economic systems or contact me and I’ll send the link to you.
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The 1974 Trade Act or its nickname, the Tariff Reform Act gave the President the power to mitigate trade issues only in the name of national security. Most often, however, the Act has been used to punish other nations for political purposes via the United States Trade Representative. These cases can be brought to the Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission for mitigative purposes. Donald Trump used this law to further the “America First” policy where exports are good and imports are bad; a simple mercantilism approach and is bad economics for all.
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