U.S. Lumber Coalition Responds to TreeFrognews: Rigged by Design? How Method and Policy Keep U.S. Lumber Duties High
TreeFrognews published an opinion by Editor Kelly McCloskey.
This is a response from Zoltan van Heyningen, the Executive Director of the U.S. Lumber Coalition.
Understanding Why Duties Persist — Not Because of Arbitrary Math, But Because of Past and Ongoing Harm
TreeFrognews recently published an opinion by its Editor Kelly McCloskey. As is often
the case for those trying to defend Canada’s softwood lumber trade practices, they must
rely on arguments that are irrelevant to the current round of antidumping and
countervailing duty cases against unfairly traded Canadian lumber imports. In this
instance, Mr. McClosky’s criticism of the zeroing methodology is beside the point,
because the U.S. Department of Commerce did not use zeroing when calculating the
antidumping duty rates that are currently in place.
Canada’s unfair trade practices are real. The harm to U.S. companies, workers, and
communities is real. Government aid to Canada’s lumber industry, whether provincial or
federal, is a subsidy, because providing government money to an industry is the very
definition of a subsidy no matter how it is presented. Canada is entitled to its own
system and to decide what role the Canadian government plays with respect to its
lumber industry. Canada is not entitled to unrestrained access to the U.S. market for its
massive excess lumber capacity and production while that industry benefits from
subsidies and engages in well-documented dumping practices.
Canada is also not entitled to maintain a USMCA Chapter 10 dispute settlement system
that is different from any other bilateral or multilateral dispute settlement system. U.S.
courts exist for both domestic and foreign companies and nations to appeal the
decisions of the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. International Trade
Commission. Just like in Canada, the origin of the U.S. legal system is English common
law. There is no basis to suggest that Canada would not receive a fair hearing before
U.S. judges, such that it is necessary to replace them with foreign citizens. Our courts
afford Canadians – and all foreign industries and governments – the same level of
accountability and oversight with respect to U.S. trade law that any U.S. citizen enjoys.
Lastly, I want to remind Mr. McCloskey that Canada enforces its own antidumping and
countervailing duty laws against unfairly traded imports into Canada. Why does
Canada recognize the importance and fairness of those laws for the Canadian economy
while arguing that such laws should not be applied to its own unfair trade practices?
By Zoltan van Heyningen, Executive Director of the U.S. Lumber Coalition