The announcement last week by new Trade Representative Ron Kirk that the United States will place 10 percent tariffs on eastern Canadian softwood lumber imports could be good news, but then, again, it may not.
In the latest chapter of the dispute between the two neighbors that goes back to the early 1960s, our government has vowed to collect $54.8 million to make up for money it says Canada owes us.
The U.S. and Canada signed a seven-year Softwood lumber Agreement in 2006 to settle a long argument over allegations that Canada improperly subsidizes its lumber producers, which, according to news reports, supply about 30 percent of the construction lumber used in the United States €“ selling it here at well below market price.
Our local Congressman Peter DeFazio applauded Kirk’s announcement, saying he’s happy that “the Obama Administration is finally standing up to the Canadian government and its illegal activities by placing tariffs on Canadian lumber.
“The timber industry is extremely important to Southwest Oregon, and Canada’s illegal activities have caused our mills to close and cost thousands of Oregonians their jobs,” he said in a statement.
With the U.S. timber industry in a massive slowdown with the onslaught of the recession, there has been agitation among elected representatives to do something about the Canadian exports. Thus, the Obama Administration’s move should prove popular. And it could help Sweet Home, if the tariff produces a more competitive market, that benefits local lumber producers who haven’t been able to sell many wood products lately.
Free-market adherents should be concerned about any tariff, but this one has some upside simply because one of the main reasons Canadian lumber has been so cheap is because of those government subsidies.
The question now is whether our government representatives are ready to go to battle to expand the timber harvest in the United States. While they sit in Congress and gripe about Canada, our own national forests are not healthy. If our legislators, bureaucrats and courts continue to heed extremist environmentalists who believe that our forests should be protected from human impact, then they need to understand that we will all pay the price in the long run.
The forests are becoming overgrown; they haven’t been allowed to be thinned by occasional fires as they were when the Native Americans lived here, and they will eventually burn €“ big.
DeFazio and the rest of the Oregon delegation are influenced by people who see the national forests as a park and want them protected from saws. Their view is understandable. But it isn’t right.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too and, to employ another cliché, somebody has to pay the piper.