The Cost of Lumber, U.S. Homebuilding and the Softwood Lumber Trade Cases

It’s been seven years since the U.S. government imposed countervailing and anti-dumping duties on subsidized and unfairly traded Canadian softwood lumber. Despite claims by homebuilders that these duties—which simply offset the subsidies that Canadian producers receive from their government and the resulting unfair trade —would harm U.S. homebuilding, the reality shows that those claims were, and continue to be, wrong.