Continued U.S. duties on Canadian softwood lumber ‘unjustified,’ minister says – National | 24CA News
Canada’s worldwide commerce minister says the United States seems to be urgent forward with what she calls “unjustified” duties on softwood lumber imports.
Mary Ng says the anti-dumping and countervailing duties the U.S. imposes on Canadian softwood lumber are little greater than a tax on American customers.
A raft of paperwork filed immediately by the U.S. Department of Commerce, simply the newest in a sequence of evaluations of the dispute, signifies the anti-dumping and countervailing duties aren’t going away.
The newest mixed obligation charges — that are preliminary and gained’t take impact till after a closing overview anticipated this summer time — vary between 7.29 and 9.38 per cent.
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Ng calls the outcomes of the overview “disappointing” to forest sector staff, companies and communities on each side of the Canada-U.S. border.
She says Canada will use all avenues to combat the duties, together with litigation below NAFTA and its successor the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, in addition to on the World Trade Organization.
“With these preliminary results, the U.S. Department of Commerce has indicated its intention to maintain its unjustified duties on imports of Canadian softwood lumber,” Ng stated in a press release Tuesday.
“Canada remains ready and willing to find solutions that allow for a return to predictable cross-border trade in softwood lumber. We are confident that a negotiated solution to this long-standing issue is in the best interests of both our countries.”
The U.S. needs Canada to handle the provincial stumpage payment regime that American producers have lengthy complained offers producers north of the border an unfair benefit — the core situation in a dispute that has endured for many years.
Ottawa, nonetheless, insists that such a basic change to the best way a key Crown useful resource is managed just isn’t on the desk.
Lumber-producing provinces set stumpage charges for timber harvested from Crown land — a system that U.S. producers, pressured to pay market charges, say quantities to an unfair subsidy.
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