Posted on 04/03/2006 7:03:33 PM PDT by nypokerface
This is the worst case of protectionism on the planet. Bad for Canada and the US. Serves no purpose as they punish Canada while Europe sends boatloads of lumber w/o duties. This needs to be removed to lower prices on housing.
Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
What's the cost for an out-of-province license, and do I need a duck stamp?
LOL. I'm not sure -- I'll have to do some research for you.
I like to hunt bucks and does...
Why do you continue to spam these lumber tariff threads when all you know is what your buddy at Weyerhauser tells you? Five years of tariffs? Try 15 years plus.
As far as why US Lumber producers are going out of business, what do you think the impact of the spotted owl and coho salmon endangered species act regulations have had on the industry?
Alberta's Child lives in New Jersey.
I could tell by his accent...
How about a recovery plan for the communities cursed by the Northwest Forest Plan? This is what happened to the Klamath River corridor post northern spotted owl:
The mid-Klamath River Corridor experienced a population decline of 22%. The number of residents aged 0-4 and 20-29 dropped by over 50%, while age 5-19 and 30-44 dropped 45%. Age 45-64 grew 86%. There was a 41.8% drop in school enrollment. Median household income declined from $31,236 to $20,924 (drop of 33%.) The number of households earning less than $10,000 grew by 24%. Unemployment climbed from 16.18% to 19.60% in 2000. (It is currently 18.8%) Manufacturing jobs (lumber mill) which had accounted for almost one third of the jobs dropped to 4%. One community on the River now has more than an 18% unemployment rate.
Countywide, our unemployment rate stands at 11%. In the fiscal year 1989/90, Siskiyou County received as much as $4.2 million a year as its 25% share of timber revenues from the National Forests. At one time, we had 50 sawmills. Now we have none.
About 23% of our children now live below the poverty line and 55% live in low income households.
5 posted on 04/03/2006 7:32:47 PM PDT by marsh2 [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Thanks for the comic relief, not that the guy bugs me or anything... ;o)
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/business/060403/b040386.html
If you really are interested in the facts, this article may help. The WTO ruling has no force in law, while the NAFTA rulings, which have been consistently in favor of Canada, does. Pride has nothing to do with it.
One thing in the article you quoted was of in terest, though:
""Canadian lumber producers have a long way to go to stand on their own feet," Swanson said.
Exactly right. Interesting how some FReepers are not so much against government subsidies--in actuality if not detail--when it's THEIR team getting them.
Why do you keep bringing up side issues when you can't dispute the facts I've posted?
If you think unfair trade practices against the country that gives you your whole national economy are good, that's fine. But why can't you come up with FACTS disputing the FACTS I have posted that you "don't feel" are facts?
You're very tiresome on this issue. Get the FACTS about US vs. Canada production, and get over your feelings.
As for lumber producers going out of business, you can't simply toss that out out of context as if it somehow disproves those production figures. If you knew anything about basic business practices, you wouldn't even have to ask that question: With the US producing 13 billion feet PLUS Canada adding LESS than 3 billion per yer, AND Canada cheating us, the market can only support so many producers. This is BASIC stuff--companies don't just go out of business during recessions, they go out of business for many, many reasons--such as flooded markets, and markets flooded by cheap goods meant to drive US lumber producers out of business so subsidized Canadian goods can move in and fill the void after they've been illegally propped up to outwait the competition.
I know you love Canada, but we here in America have to admit our wrongdoings; take a lesson. And don't cheat the country you owe your whole damned economy to, and then spin it without addressing the FACTS.
Goodbye.
Good points. Some people can't seem to grasp that business doesn't take place in a void. Even from my admittedly limited knowledge of the industry I know that the endangered species protection and other enironmentalist suits (runoff from mills, preservation, etc.) have battered the US industry.
That's a shocker alright, and it's mostly good news, except for the fact that we should NEVER have put ourselves into the position that gives the WTO ANY authority to make rulings over U.S. trade whatsoever! The WTO is an evil arm of the UN, and has ruled against the U.S. in most ALL of the trade disputes. The U.S. had done fine without them since the founding of America, and we prospered! Now, we have unfair trade. The globalist traitors in the U.S. should be behind bars!
(I'm going to use 2001 as the benchmark year for the softwood lumber dispute instead of 1982 or any year in between, since: 1) 2001 was the year the last lumber agreement between the two countries expired and the current round of tariffs was imposed on Canadian softwood lumber, and 2) any developments from that point forward are entirely the responsibility of the current administration in Washington and can’t be laid at the feet of anyone else. I'm also ignoring the effects of post-hurricane rebuilding on this thread, since this involved some major unforeseen circumstances and is very much a dynamic situation that is changing rapidly.)
There has been a lot of information posted here about the volume of lumber production in the U.S. and Canada, along with the "real" issues behind the decline in the U.S. lumber industry over the years (i.e., the influence of excessive environmental regulations here in the U.S.). If the lumber industry has been declining in the U.S. for reasons other than unfair trading practices in Canada, then the U.S. government over the last five years has been in the bizarre position of imposing heavy tariffs on imported products in an industry in which U.S. producers aren't even capable of meeting the domestic demand for the products in question. I’m sure most of us agree that governments are generally dysfunctional just on principle, but I can't think of anything more idiotic than that. The end result is that the tariff probably hasn't saved a single U.S. company or even a single U.S. job in the lumber industry, but it has raised the cost of a new home in the U.S. by an average of $2,500 or so. If this makes any sense to anyone here, please enlighten me.
What people don't seem to remember going back to 2001 was that Canada really didn't need to subsidize their lumber industry in any way in order to compete with U.S. producers. With a Canadian dollar that was so weak against the U.S. dollar at the time (the exchange rate was something like $1 CDN to $0.65 US, if I remember correctly), Canadian producers already had such an enormous cost advantage even without any miniscule "subsidy" in place.
Now let's look at one part of the statement I highlighted in the previous paragraph: ". . . an industry in which U.S. producers aren't even capable of meeting the domestic demand for the products in question." If that sounds familiar to anyone, it's probably because it perfectly describes another industry that has been in the news a lot recently -- energy production. If the U.S. was really concerned about eliminating government subsidies for foreign industries and upholding "free-market principles" in international trade, then why haven't we seen the same push here in the U.S. for import tariffs on Canadian oil and natural gas? As I pointed out in an earlier post on this thread, much of the oil and gas the U.S. imports from Canada is extracted from the same government-owned lands -- and under similar "subsidized" arrangements with provincial governments -- where the lumber is harvested!
Could it be that the sanctimonious proclamations regarding "free-market capitalism" here in the U.S. only apply until political aspirations come into play -- and that (conversely) even the most ardent protectionists in the U.S. are perfectly comfortable with government subsidies of foreign industries, so long as the end result is that we get some cheap gasoline and cheap home heating fuel out of the deal?
As far as the volume of lumber production in the U.S. and Canada is concerned, overall comparisons between the two nations aren't accurate measures to be used when discussing this particular issue. We're talking specifically about softwood lumber products, and even within that category we're talking about softwood lumber from western Canada and softwood lumber from the western U.S. Some of the strongest political pressure in this dispute from the U.S. perspective has come from lumber producers in the southeastern U.S., but they have never had much of a leg to stand on from a factual standpoint because the inferior quality of softwood lumber from forests along the spine of the Appalachians means these producers can never really compete on even terms with western Canadian producers. (This adds another idiotic element to the mix -- which is that U.S. consumers are now paying inflated prices for second-rate lumber. But we'll leave that one for another discussion.)
Have they come for your vitamins yet? If everything they do is against America and American sovereignty, why haven't they made good on their desire to take your supplements away yet?
It never ceases to amaze me that any American would defend this unconstitutional supranational organization.
Since you don't have the simple courtesy to address the actual issues I brought up I will return the favor, but you keep obsessing over this point and it is pure lunacy on your part. That the US "aren't even capable of..." blah blah even though the US produces FOUR TIMES as much lumber only proves that there is huge demand here, and yet your logic is truly bizarre--the Canadian de facto subsidies are what's behind this whole discussion, and it doesn't matter who's producing what, they undercut US prices.
You don't even seem to realize how completely you've stepped in it: Before you asked why US lumber companies were "failing in record numbers"...and yet here you take another tack and talk about how "US companies aren't even capable of meeting demand"--you don't see how market conditions that affect those companies created by illegal Canadian practices just MIGHT have something to do with that, and would be the reason behind those taxes? (Which happens to be the POINT of the article we're supposedly discussing.)
You might do better if you didn't keep talking past me, and address the specific figures and facts I posted instead of going off into the fields on some wild goose chase to find something to divert the discussion of this very specific situation. Just grabbing at anything that's critical of the US in terms of lumber doesn't add up to a coherent position; it just looks like rhetorical flailing.
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