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Mexican President Vicente Fox has expressed support for Canada in its trade dispute with the United States over softwood lumber. Speaking in Vancouver, Canada Friday, Mr. Fox said the United States, Canada, and Mexico must abide by rulings made under the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. A NAFTA arbitration panel recently ruled that the United States should not impose hefty tariffs on imported Canadian lumber. The United States has not lifted the tariffs. It says Canada's government subsidizes lumber exports, creating an unfair advantage over U.S. timber companies. Referring to the lumber dispute, Mr. Fox said Mexico regrets...

If the feds really want to help the economy post-Katrina, here are four words: lumber, cement, shrimp and steel. They all have prices higher than necessary because of U.S. anti-dumping trade law. Start with lumber and cement, which will soon be in great demand to rebuild the tens of thousands of damaged homes. Prices are sure to rise as reconstruction begins, but thanks to U.S. tariffs as high as 27% on Canadian lumber, American home buyers already pay an extra $1,000 on average for their shelter. The same goes for U.S. duties on Mexican cement, which have averaged 55% since...

Canada suspends softwood talks with U.S. Last Updated Tue, 16 Aug 2005 13:47:58 EDT CBC News Canada has suspended softwood lumber talks with the United States to protest America's refusal to heed a NAFTA ruling that sided with the Canadian position. A scheduled meeting that was to start the next round of talks in the dispute has been cancelled, with no hint of when talks might resume. "Following consultations with provincial governments, and in light of the U.S. response to the Aug. 10 decision of the NAFTA extraordinary challenge committee, the government of Canada has decided to not proceed with...

TORONTO (CP) - Dealing with the United States in trade disputes has been "a very painful experience" for Canada in recent years, federal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale said Monday. Goodale, speaking at the annual conference of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, said Canada has been treated unfairly by the U.S. in disputes over such goods as wheat, beef and softwood lumber. The minister said he was "very disturbed" by the American response to a recent NAFTA panel ruling on the softwood lumber dispute that he called "absolutely clear cut and without equivocation in Canada's favour." Earlier this month, the...

Homeowners and home buyers scored a rare... victory... when a three-person arbitration panel ruled unanimously that U.S. tariffs against imported Canadian softwood lumber violate the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).... [R]escinding the tariffs will reduce the average construction cost of a new home by about $1,000 and make about 300,000 more moderate-income Americans eligible for mortgages. Instead of hailing the move as a welcome step toward more affordable housing, the Bush administration insists that it won't lift the tariffs, which can reach as high as 27%. It further plans to engage in more stalling tactics by appealing the decision...

Canada Claims Victory After Lumber Ruling August 10th, 2005 @ 2:11pm By BETH DUFF-BROWN Associated Press Writer TORONTO (AP) - As Canada claimed victory in the softwood lumber dispute with the United States following a key NAFTA panel ruling on Wednesday, Washington replied it would keep hitting Ottawa with lumber tariffs and seek a negotiated settlement. An Extraordinary Challenge Committee of three judges _ two Canadians and one American _ set up by the North American Free Trade Agreement unanimously dismissed U.S. claims that an earlier NAFTA ruling in favor of Canada violated trade rules. That prompted Ottawa on Wednesday...

ARCATA, Calif. — Jason Wilson was just 21 when a Lakota elder gave him a spirit name. Wilson, she said, was destined to carry a heavy weight. He would need the medicine of the name she offered, she told him, "to carry that weight in a good way, a strong way and as far as it needs to be carried." Three years later, on a September day in 1998, the bearded redhead from Missouri lay in a fetal curl on the floor of a Humboldt County forest, rocking and sobbing in the duff. Next to him was 24-year-old David Nathan...

SCOTIA, Calif. - Financially troubled Pacific Lumber Co. is the victim of its corporate owner's excesses, not increasing government restrictions on logging, according to a state water agency's controversial new study. The state Water Resources Control Board's 18-page report blames Texas-based Maxxam Inc. for shifting hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from Pacific Lumber in "subtle and complex ways," forcing the North Coast timber giant to cut trees "at rates that greatly exceed sustainable forest practices." The state report claims Maxxam has funneled nearly $725 million in Pacific Lumber earnings into its own Houston, Texas, coffers over the past...

Fortuna, Calif. -- The Pacific Lumber Co. announced Tuesday it would close its Fortuna sawmill, after what the company described as "one of the most difficult seven months in the company's history." Pacific Lumber President and CEO Robert Manne said the company had been unable to harvest at sustainable levels and to get harvest plans approved by all state agencies in a timely manner.

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Pact undermines U.S. Constitution, lumber industry says WASHINGTON - Frustrated by legal challenges and stalled talks, the U.S. lumber industry is threatening an unprecedented constitutional challenge of NAFTA that could risk unravelling the decade-old free trade deal completely. The U.S. Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports yesterday confirmed statements by Sen. Michael Crapo of Idaho that it may file a lawsuit challenging the wide-ranging trade deal's authority over U.S. law. "The grounds would be that it is inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution and it violates our rights," said Harry Clark, a lawyer...

VANCOUVER (CP) -- A U.S. trade body has agreed to comply with a NAFTA panel ruling concluding Canadian softwood lumber imports are no threat to the U.S. industry. In a response to the panel decision earlier this month, the U.S. International Trade Commission said it would conclude that "the U.S. softwood lumber industry is not threatened with material injury" by the Canadian imports. But the commission made it clear in a statement Friday it wasn't happy about doing so. "We disagree with the (NAFTA) panel's view that there is no substantial evidence to support a finding of threat of material...

U.S. to cut softwood lumber duty: B.C. minister CTV.ca News StaffCanada's softwood lumber industry will see U.S. duties on its products cut by half starting in January, B.C.'s forests minister says.Mike de Jong characterized the ruling as preliminary at this point, but said it pointed in the right direction.The duty is currently 27 per cent. That would be reduced to 13 per cent, he said.A federal official said the final determination won't come until December.The U.S. Commerce Dept. is being required to acknowledge its initial numbers for calculating duties were not correct, de Jong said.But duties have gone down in...

TORONTO — Lumber and plywood prices have shot up so rapidly in recent months that they are tearing the profit out of home construction for some builders and threatening to dent the booming housing market. Paul Kuszmaul, president of Kuszmaul Builders in Champion, Ohio, said the run-up in prices had left him unsure whether to push ahead with a condominium development in the Mahoning Valley, between Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Since January, he said, the cost to build each condo unit in the project had risen $4,000, largely because the price has more than doubled for oriented-strand board, a widely used...

ATLANTA, March 30 (Reuters) - The chief executive of home improvement retailer Lowe's Cos. (nyse: LOW - news - people) said on Tuesday that he does not expect plywood prices, which are up more than 100 percent in the past year, to decrease. "I don't think you'll see plywood prices come back down," Robert Tillman told a New York consumer conference in remarks carried over the Internet. "The supply is now pretty well managed. There's not an oversupply. There are fewer manufacturers." Tillman said prices of other wood may fluctuate. Lumber prices, specifically plywood and other structural panels used in...

WTO Panel: NO U.S. Duties on Canada Wood Monday March 22, 2004 8:46 PM By NAOMI KOPPEL Associated Press Writer GENEVA (AP) - The World Trade Organization sided with Canada Monday in a dispute with the United States over lumber duties. A WTO dispute panel ruled that some U.S. duties on Canadian lumber are illegal under international rules. Washington has the right to appeal. Canadian Trade Minister Jim Peterson called the decision a ``major victory for Canada.'' ``The WTO panel's message is clear - the countervailing and anti-dumping duties imposed by the United States on Canadian softwood lumber exports are...

GENEVA (AP) - A World Trade Organization appeals panel gave a boost to the United States Monday, reversing most of an earlier ruling that said U.S. special duties on Canadian lumber were illegal. The panel agreed with U.S. claims that lumber from state-owned lands in Canada can be unfairly subsidized if provincial governments sell the wood at below-market price. Therefore the United States has the right to impose extra duties to prevent cheap Canadian wood harming U.S. manufacturers, the panel said. It stressed, however, that Washington would still have to carry out more extensive investigations before it could justify imposing...

<p>Canada, U.S. Agree to Settle Lumber Spat, Lumber Officials Say Dec. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Canada and the U.S. reached a tentative agreement to end a trade dispute over Canadian lumber exports that initially would limit producers such as Canfor Corp. and Abitibi-Consolidated Inc. to 31.5 percent of the U.S. market, or about 17 billion board feet, lumber executives said.</p>

Landowners in the Santa Cruz Mountains and other forested areas of California who want to cut timber on their property will have to submit new information to the state showing the impacts of other nearby logging projects under a bill signed Sunday by Gov. Gray Davis. The bill, by Assemblyman Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, was championed by environmental groups and opposed by some in the timber industry. Under it, the State Board of Forestry will require by Jan. 1, 2005, anyone submitting a timber harvest plan to the state to include maps showing ``the location and boundaries of past, present,...

<p>Suspicious fires destroyed three lumber yards in the last week in the Kansas City area, and authorities were trying to determine whether they are connected.</p> <p>The latest blaze leveled the 123-year-old Schutte Lumber Co. in Kansas City early Sunday, and investigators said arson is suspected.</p>

Some U.S. home builders are facing one of the many disagreeable side-effects of the military occupation of Iraq—higher costs of lumber. In a lumber market where shortages were already appearing, the Defense Logistics Agency suddenly ordered more than 20 million square-feet of plywood sheeting for construction in Iraq. Markets for plywood and its substitutes reacted strongly. Prices of oriented strand board (OSB), commonly used in new homes, apartment buildings, and commercial structures, jumped to record highs. According to Random Lengths, a lumber industry publication, the price of 7/16 inch OSB hit $445 per thousand square feet in mid-September, compared with...