Woodworking Network: Canada seeks to avoid accountability for trade practices

Ongoing unfair trade practices by Canada’s softwood lumber industry remain extremely harmful to U.S. lumber producers, workers, and their forest-dependent communities, the coalition begins in its statement. Following recent confirmation by the U.S. Department of Commerce that those unfair practices have worsened, Canada now seeks to avoid accountability under U.S. trade laws that could result in the Canadian industry paying additional duties of $1.3 billion based on its behavior in 2023 alone.

“It appears that Canada’s solution to a problem of its own making is to ask the Trump Administration for a bailout while seeking to avoid liability for the egregious unfair trade practices documented by the U.S. Department of Commerce,” stated Zoltan van Heyningen, executive director of the U.S. Lumber Coalition. “Canada and its U.S. allies are, in effect, attempting to use U.S. border tax revenues paid by the very Canadian exporters that violated our trade laws in the first place as a handout to themselves and as a payoff to the U.S. industry to drop its longstanding trade case against them.”

“This is an outrageous scheme being pushed by the Canadian industry that would not only absolve them of accountability for their past unfair trade practices but would also allow them to continue dumping their massive volume of excess lumber into the U.S. market,” added van Heyningen.

Andrew Miller, chairman/owner of Stimson Lumber Co, affirmed once again that, “Canada’s suggestion that the Trump Administration use money owed to the U.S. taxpaying public to save the Canadian industry from the consequences of its own cheating is an absolute affront to the hard working men and women in the American forestry industry.”

Read the full article here.