Hours after Donald Trump doubled down on his vow to hit $3 billion worth of Canadian lumber with a 25% tariff starting tomorrow – which, in effect, is a 40% direct and indirect tax once softwood duties are added – the US Department of Commerce has flagged that softwood duties could jump from 15% to more than 27% under a plan that could decimate Canadia’s softwood industry.
In effect, this would see combined taxes on Canadian lumber spike at more than 50%, leading David Eby, British Columbia’s Premier, to warn that the new preliminary dumping rate—more than triple the rate it was three years ago—poses a “massive threat” to the province’s forest products industry.
“B.C.’s iconic forestry sector and the people whose livelihoods depend on it have faced immense challenges for years and, today, are facing a new, massive threat. B.C. has long maintained that any and all duties on softwood lumber are unjustified, and these anti-dumping duties are based on a biased calculation.”
Wood Central understands that the anti-dumping duties are compounding challenges for an industry already facing tariff threats and Trump’s order over the weekend to initiate a separate investigation of imported forest products – which saw Peter Navarro, White House trade advisor, single out Canada, Germany and Brazil for “dumping lumber into our markets at the expense of both our economic prosperity and national security.”
Last year, Wood Central reported that the post-2017 escalation in the 40-year softwood dispute, sparked by US buyers substituting local Southern Yellow Pine (SYP) for Canadian Spruce-Pine-Fir (SPF), has seen Canada’s share of US markets fall from 33% in 2016 to just 24% this year – with the American South surpassing Canadia to become the dominate supplier of lumber into the US.
- To learn more about the North American softwood lumber dispute and its impact on the price of Spruce-Pine-Fir (SPF) and Southern Yellow Pine (SYP), click here for Wood Central’s special feature. And to find out more about the Trump administration’s plans to use US lumber to fix the housing crisis, click here for more information.
