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Prosperity

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Lumber dispute once again.

Contributor: OJ

Date: 2003-02-02 02:13:56

This is what happens when we do not include softwood lumber (or culture) in a legally binding agreement: these industries become victim to a protectionist US Congress who can argue that almost ANYTHING counts as an illegal subsidy. This is why lumber and culture are among the most disputatious issues between Canada and the United States. Canada needs to broaden the scope of NAFTA to include such industries so that our sovereignty can be preserved, since policy makers do not need to walk on eggshells so as not to risk the ire of American protectionists. NOT including them in NAFTA is what is reducing our sovereignty, rather than the other way around as many anti-globalization activists argue.

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Lumber dispute once again.

Contributor: cfallon

Date: 2003-02-07 14:13:34

Two things:

1) The US does not benefit from the softwood tariffs it imposed on us. A small handful of fatcats in the lumber industry benefit, but the construction industry is hit hard by it. I think this will be reversed.

2) Softwood suffers from OUR governments policy of a low dollar. If our dollar was at $0.80 US, the tariffs would not have been imposed.

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Lumber dispute once again.

Contributor: OJ

Date: 2003-02-07 18:55:35

1) Not even the fat cats are benefitting. The big US companies like Weyerhauser (I hope I spelled that correctly) have operations on BOTH sides of the border. So when they export lumber to their own country, it gets slapped with duties as well. The people benefitting are the small lumber-producing outfits in Georgia and Washington state who only operate in the United States.

2) That's a good point, I hadn't thought of it that way.

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Lumber dispute once again.

Contributor: banquosghost

Date: 2003-02-09 15:48:40

The government doesn't choose the value of the Cdn dollar. Neither does the Bank of Canada. The value of our dollar fluctuates on a number of various international conditions and is compared against the US dollar only because the US is our largest trading partner. Trying to slough off the value of the dollar on to specific federal government policies is a pointless game that would eventually end up at the door of the World Bank and IMF anyway.

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