Herrera Beutler Applauds New Tariffs on Canadian Lumber Imports

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Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler joined several other representatives in a statement that applauded the U.S. Department of Commerce on its antidumping and countervailing duties imposed on softwood lumber imports from Canada.

After the most-recent softwood lumber agreement expired, negotiations between the United States and Canada to regulate softwood trade were unsuccessful, according to a release from Herrera Beutler’s office.

That led representatives from the U.S. timber industry to petition the department of commerce and the U.S. International Trade Commission to file the duties against lumber producers in Canada.

Under the nation’s trade law, the United States industries are able to offset duties against illegally subsidized and dumped imports that threaten to place domestic producers out of business, according to the release.

“The U.S. Department of Commerce earlier this year investigated the softwood lumber market and found that the Canadian government heavily subsidizes their softwood lumber production, artificially lowering production costs for Canadian mills and ultimately allowing them to dump softwood lumber products into the U.S. at below fair-value prices, putting at-risk the 350,000 jobs directly and indirectly associated with the U.S. sawmill and wood preservation industry,” according to the release. “The remedy announced today will help counteract Canada’s unfair trade practices by enforcing antidumping and countervailing duties of between 9.92 and 23.76 percent on Canadian softwood imports.”



Herrera Beutler, R-Battle Ground, joined Reps. Peter DeFazio, Greg Walden and Rick Larsen in the statement released on Thursday.

“The duties announced today by the Commerce Department will provide much-needed relief for the U.S. softwood lumber industry,” the statement reads. “Since the expiration of the last Softwood Lumber Trade Agreement in 2015, Canada’s share of the U.S. softwood lumber industry has crept up to one-third of the market, devastating U.S. producers. These new antidumping and countervailing duties will help to prevent Canadian producers from unfairly dumping artificially cheap products into our markets and will help level the playing field for U.S. producers competing against Canada’s government-subsidized timber.”

The statement goes on to say Canadians rejected reasonable offers made by the U.S. which led the department of commerce no choice but to impose duties on the softwood imports.

“Thanks to these new duties, the U.S. lumber industry will finally have room to grow to its full potential without the stifling constraints of unfairly-traded Canadian lumber.” read the statement.