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

It’s been eight 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 unfair pricing by Canadian producers and the subsidies that these producers receive from their government—would harm U.S. homebuilding, the reality shows that those claims were, and continue to be, wrong.