New U.S. Lumber Duty Triggers Anger in Canada
COPYRIGHT 2001 XINHUA NEWS AGENCY
November 1, 2001
OTTAWA, November 1 - The imposition of a second punitive duty by the U.S. government on Wednesday against Canadian softwood lumber exports to the United States triggered widespread anger in Canada, local press reported Thursday.
One Canadian industry official warned of a shutdown of the entire lumber sector in Canada's western province of British Columbia next spring if the tariffs stand.
The U.S. decision to pile an average 12.6 percent anti-dumping duty on top of a 19.3 percent countervailing duty imposed last August was a "kick in the teeth" to Canada as it tried to negotiate an end to the longstanding lumber trade war, said Mike de Jong, the forests minister of the British Columbia Province. De Jong, whose province accounts for more than half of lumber exports to the United States, suggested that the duties were a stab in Canada's back when it was helping the United States with the war on international terrorism.
"We're actually on your side. We're one of the good guys," he said during a conference call with Canadian and American reporters.
"Someone should tell the American people that while their attention is understandably focused elsewhere in the world, there' s a very small group of bureaucrats and politicians and a few industrialists who are doing a hatchet job on their closest ally."
Canada's International Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew condemned the new duty. "We're up to 32 percent in tariffs ... this is outrageous, this is punitive," he said in Ottawa. Pettigrew echoed American critics who warn the duties will boost housing costs and deepen a U.S. economic slump.
"Americans have really come to hit themselves with a two-by- four right on the head, hitting and harming their own economy, their own interests," he said.
The duties, which now total about 31.9 percent, could cost the Canadian lumber industry hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
The countervailing duty imposed on Canadian wood products in August was based on allegations from U.S. lumber producers that Canadian exporters were subsidized through low provincial cutting fees for Crown timber -- known as stumpage.
The current anti-dumping duty, based on a concurrent complaint from U.S. producers, arose out of accusations that Canadian individual companies were selling into the U.S. market at below the cost of production or Canadian domestic prices.
"This is a further example of the U.S. bullying Canada because their industry is uncompetitive," said Frank Dottori, co-chairman of the Montreal-based Free Trade Lumber Council and chief executive of Tembec Inc., a major Quebec producer.