{"id":265917,"date":"2018-02-13T11:30:12","date_gmt":"2018-02-13T16:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/issues\/learning-from-the-2017-softwood-lumber-dispute\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T21:58:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T01:58:07","slug":"learning-from-the-2017-softwood-lumber-dispute","status":"publish","type":"issues","link":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2018\/02\/learning-from-the-2017-softwood-lumber-dispute\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning from the 2017 softwood lumber dispute"},"content":{"rendered":"

A day after the US Thanksgiving holiday in November 2016, the US Lumber Coalition<\/a> filed petitions for countervailing and antidumping duties against Canadian lumber imports. Five months later, the US Department of Commerce issued its preliminary assessment<\/a> in the countervailing duty case and levied duties averaging 19.88 percent against Canadian lumber exports to the United States. Canadian lumber companies will be paying a projected $500 million<\/a> in countervailing and antidumping duties for the year 2017.<\/p>\n

In this long-running and bitter trade dispute, the primary concern raised by the US lumber industry is about the Canadian government\u2019s pricing practices. The fees paid by Canadian lumber mills for their timber, which is cut largely from government-owned land, are lower than fees paid on US timber, which comes mainly from private land. The US industry claims that these low stumpage rates \u2014 the market prices that companies must pay for the right to cut trees \u2014 constitute a subsidy that has allowed Canadian producers to gain an unfair competitive advantage over their US counterparts. Canada has repeatedly denied these claims and says the reasons why lumber exports to the US keep going up are not any unfair practices but the exchange rate advantage, superior production efficiency and US consumers\u2019 preference for superior-quality Canadian lumber. The two countries signed agreements in 1996 and again in 2006 that kept the dispute under control for a few years, but when the latest one expired in October 2015, the wrangling resumed.<\/p>\n

The Canadian government criticized the United States for the April 2017 decision to impose duties and has emphasized its determination to fight the move. Ottawa has initiated challenges with the World Trade Organization (WTO) and through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Since the latest duties were imposed, Canadian lumber exports to the US have dropped by at least 8 percent<\/a> (figure 1). However, the industry did not take as big a hit as it might have. Due to record-high lumber prices<\/a> and extraordinarily strong demand from US builders, the Canadian lumber firms \u2014 touch wood \u2014 did not need to make major staff layoffs or massive production cuts.<\/p>\n

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