The cost to build or renovate a home will now jump $15,000 to $20,000, that is according to Ravi Parmar, British Columbia’s Minister for Forests, who today slammed a “final decision” by the US Commerce Department to hike anti-dumping duties on Canadian softwood to 20.56 per cent:
“U.S. President Donald Trump has made it his mission to destroy Canada’s economy, and there is no sector that has faced more of that than the forestry sector,” he told CBC News. “This is a big deal for our workers. This will have a significant impact. It will lead to curtailments.”
“This is going to mean that Americans, in particular middle-class Americans, are going to be paying more to the tune of $15,000 to $20,000 more USD to purchase or to build a home.”
As it stands, the United States is the largest single market for British Columbian lumber exports, with 50% of the $10 billion industry traded across the border. But amid a series of challenges for the province’s forestry industry — including a mountain pine beetle infestation that has killed hundreds of thousands of trees — mills have been closing around the province in recent years, and major forestry companies are opening up new mills in the United States.
Kurt Niquidet, president of the B.C. Lumber Trade Council said that the industry is especially vulnerable given Trump has also initiated a federal investigation into the US imports of lumber and timber that will also hit huge volumes of lumber traded across the border, citing “national security,” which could see taxes on lumber spike at 50% or more in the coming months: “Softwood lumber is quite important for the United States. They can only supply about 70 per cent of their softwood lumber demand, and they’re importing 30 per cent from elsewhere,” he told CBC News. “25 per cent of that’s really coming from Canada, and British Columbia is the largest softwood lumber producer within Canada.”
Last week, Mark Carney, Canada’s Prime Minister, said that solving the lumber dispute was a “top priority” for Canada’s trade with the United States – revealing that lumber quotas ould be a potential circuit breaker for the decades-long trade dispute between the two countries: “There is normally some element of managed trade that comes out of any agreement,” Carney said last week, which could include quotas, amongst “a variety of (other) trade factors.”
As it stands, 40% of all Canadian lumber exported across the border originates from British Columbia, with approximately 70% of all lumber imports used in housing. Last year, Wood Central reported that a 3.4% price difference is the sweet spot for substitutability between Spruce-Pine-Fir (SPF) and Southern Yellow Pine (SYP).
- To learn more about the impact of duties on lumber prices, click here for Wood Central’s special feature from March 2025.
