Expiration of Softwood Pact Nears, Concerns Arise

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Pallet Enterprise Oct 06, 2015

Softwood Lumber Agreement: As the trade pact sets to expire, neither the U.S. nor Canadian authorities can reach a new agreement. Looks as if conditions are right for Canadian lumber imports to increase.
 

As the trade pact sets to expire, neither the U.S. nor Canadian authorities can reach a new agreement. Looks as if conditions are right for Canadian lumber imports to increase.

The expiration of the U.S.-Canadian Softwood Lumber Agreement, as well as other factors, could lead to an influx of Canadian lumber entering the U. S. market, according to experts.

The agreement, set to expire Oct. 12 after being renewed for two years in 2012, regulates Canadian lumber exports to the United States. Under the terms of the 2006 pact, the United States ended collection of countervailing and anti-dumping duties on imported Canadian softwood lumber, and Canada imposed taxes and quantitative restrictions on softwood lumber exports to the United States.

The two sides have remained far apart in terms of a new agreement.

Canadian officials have made it clear they wanted to extend the agreement in its current form. Steve Thomson, British Columbia’s Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources Operations, said as much in early September. “Our current position is consistent with the industry position, which is we would like to see the agreement extended (in its current form),” said Thomson, whose remarks were reported by the Times Colonist newspaper in Victoria.

U.S. lumber producers, represented by the U.S. Lumber Coalition, have something different in mind. They told an audience in Vancouver earlier this year that they want a new agreement with tighter restrictions on Canadian softwood lumber exports to the country or else they will seek trade sanctions under U.S. law. “The present agreement as structured, from the coalition’s perspective, is not a viable way of moving forward,” said, Zoltan van Heyningen, executive director of the Coalition, as reported by a business news publication in Vancouver.

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