Trade panel sends U.S. softwood lumber duties back to Washington
A USMCA panel with an American majority has found the U.S. Commerce Department couldn’t back up its claim that four provinces rig their timber markets. Ottawa took almost a week to notice.
A USMCA trade panel has ordered the U.S. Department of Commerce to go back and justify — or redo — fifteen pieces of its softwood lumber duty findings against Canada, in a ruling that took nearly six years to arrive.
The decision was filed on October 8. The U.S. Federal Register notice of October 14 records only that the panel “affirmed in part and remanded in part” Commerce’s determination. British Columbia posted the 182-page ruling.
The case covers Commerce’s first review of the 2018 duty order, for April 2017 to December 2018. Three of the five panelists, including chairman Robert E. Ruggeri, sit on the American roster — and the panel still sided with the provinces on the central question.
On Ontario, it called the Crown’s roughly 95 per cent share of the harvest “the centerpiece” of Commerce’s finding that the province’s private timber market is distorted. It wrote that “Commerce cannot legally rely solely upon that level” of government dominance, and agreed with Ontario that its conclusion “ultimately was not reasonable or supported by substantial evidence.”
The panel also sent back findings that private stumpage prices in Alberta and New Brunswick and auction prices in Quebec were distorted, plus findings on B.C. log export restraints, several provincial grant and electricity programs, and Canfor’s subsidy rate. Commerce has 90 days to respond. The panel affirmed Commerce “in all other respects.”
A remand does not by itself change a duty rate; Commerce may rewrite its reasons and keep the numbers. But an American-majority panel has found the record did not support its distortion findings for four provinces.
As of early October 15, Global Affairs Canada’s softwood lumber page, last updated October 6, did not list the ruling.
As Rebel News reported last week, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly is threatening Cleveland-Cliffs with “the full force of the law” over up to 500 Stelco layoffs blamed on American tariffs. When a U.S. panel hands Canada a win, there’s no press conference.
Canada asked for this review in December 2020. The answer took almost six years. Washington announced it in one sentence. Ottawa hasn’t announced it at all.
Yanky Pollak
Videographer
Yaakov “Yanky” Pollak is an energetic community activist. Yaakov has been involved in many political campaigns, loves photography, and enjoys spending some free time at the shooting range. Originally from Montreal, Yanky escaped Canadian tyranny moving to the free state of Florida during the pandemic of 2021.
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