ORLAND, Maine — Tom Fox loves his job. A barrel-chested, energetic man, he started Fox Forestry after earning his master’s degree at the University of Maine.
His company sells Swedish-made timber bandsaws—mostly for personal use by homeowners who want to source the wood they use for home improvements from their property. Beyond providing an avenue for self-sufficiency, Fox sees his product as offering something more.
He cut off a one-inch plank of wood and displays its fresh inner face saying, “Just like that, with your own personal chain saw you have a board, there’s no tariffs.”
He’s referencing the current eight-percent tariff on softwood imported to the United States from Canada. Though it’s less than the 20 percent duty in 2017, this trade policy has led to an increase in the price of timber. According to one economist’s math, the price of lumber products overall has climbed 10 percent since the tariffs took effect.
For owners of Maine lumber companies, this shift means more of a competitive edge for an American market that has struggled against the larger, and heavily subsidized softwood industry in Canada.
As Jason Brochu of Pleasant Valley Lumber in Dover-Foxcroft observed in July, “It’s given U.S. manufacturers a level playing field to compete on and the confidence to invest.”
But for all the timber industry stands to gain, companies that purchase wood, like contractors and homebuilders, are seeing the opposite effects. And David Logan, an economist at the National Association of Homebuilders, says our state’s carpenters and contractors are at a particular disadvantage.
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“The first people I hear about actual price effects that builders see from lumber tariffs are from our members in New York, Maine, and other northern states,” Logan said.
Despite this, some business owners like Michael Wight who owns Broughman Builders—a seller of manufactured homes with ample amounts of softwood—say they’re compelled to support tariffs even though they bring higher prices.
“That’s one of the reasons tariffs are in place to make it a competitive market so that they’re not selling lumber way cheaper than the locals," Wight said.