U.S. Increases Duties on Canadian Softwood Lumber

On October 31, the U.S. government added an additional 12.6 percent anti-dumping duty on Canadian softwood lumber, on top of the 19.3 percent countervailing duties imposed last August. This brings the total tariff on Canadian lumber exports to the U.S. to almost 32 percent. These sanctions are expected to cost the Canadian economy billions of dollars and tens of thousands of Canadian forestry workers their jobs.

The U.S. lumber industry has been complaining for years that Canadian stumpage fees are extremely low, giving the Canadian industry an unfair competitive edge. However, every complaint filed by the U.S. lumber industry has been rejected by trade dispute agencies. They have found that, while Canadian stumpage fees are lower than those in the U.S., various other subsidies offered by the U.S. government (such as building roads) are much higher, so the overall levels of subsidies are essentially the same. The U.S. government has refused to abide by these decisions and for the past decade has used its economic and political power to illegally restrict Canadian softwood lumber exports to the United States.

In this most recent escalation of economic sanctions by the U.S., a new demand has emerged from the U.S. lumber industry. It is insisting that the Canadian government privatize half of all Crown lands as a solution to the dispute. It is not clear how privatizing Crown lands would affect the price of Canadian softwood lumber, but since the Canadian lumber industry is already dominated by U.S. multinationals, those same multinationals would stand to benefit the most from such a land grab.