Softwood Update- Envoy Says Matter in “Limbo”
Prince George, B.C. – B.C.’s Special Envoy on the Softwood Lumber Agreement, David Emerson, has returned from another meeting in Washington and says the situation there is not yet solid.
“There is still an awful lot of fluidity in the Administration’s approach to NAFTA renegotiations” says Emerson “it’s not entirely clear if softwood lumber is going to be dealt with early and as a one off, or if it could get wrapped into a larger NAFTA negotiations.” He says while there have been suggestions that some are pressing to have softwood lumped into the NAFTA agreement, he has not been getting that indication from those he has spoken with in Washington.
“We would be much better off to have a negotiation earlier rather than later” says Emerson, “Having softwood lumbar wrapped up in a NAFTA negotiation would cause it to be dragged on for multiple years, and litigation probably to continue during that whole time, duties to be continued to be paid during that whole time, but I do believe both the U.S. Administration and Canada, will want to get into a negotiation on softwood lumber, and my own guess is there is a window late summer early fall, and if that doesn’t initiate something meaningful in terms of negotiations, then I think we are in to probably into next year, and perhaps longer.”
“To be really honest, there is still a tremendous amount of turbulence in Washington right now” says Emerson, “There are a lot of positions unfilled in the critical parts of the administration. The signals we’ve seen from some of the more hawkish Senators have continued to be quite aggressively negative.”
Emerson says if there is to be a successful negotiation, the first thing that has to happen is the President’s office has to be enthusiastic ” At this stage, we are cautiously optimistic that is the case” but notes there are divisions even within the President’s office.
Emerson says he is not pessimistic about reaching an agreement “I think what I am underscoring is the sense of limbo we are in right now as the Whitehouse comes to grips with its own approach to NAFTA and an unknown dynamic is underway in Congress.”
The United States is expected to announce its preliminary duties on Canadian softwood before the end of April. Those duties could cripple some small producers, and the impact would ripple out through some communities. Minister of Forests, Steve Thomson says he has been in Toronto this past week to meet with the Softwood Lumber Task Force to examine what supports could be in place not only for producers, but communities and businesses that rely on forestry. “We have been working very closely with the Federal Government both at the Ministerial level and the senior officials level about the support the Federal Government can offer in the way of programming.” He says they need to be “prudent” in dealing with the consequences of the softwood lumber dispute as there are concerns any action could add to the trade dispute.
Comments
Very informative article but not good news.
Lumber exporters will be paying duties/tariffs starting very soon (retroactively even?) and continuing until the issue is settled. Lumber prices may or may not cover the duties. Uncertainty for companies and workers at best, economic disruption is possible. US gov’t & industry have very little incentive to settle, and this issue is low priority on Trump’s list of things to do.
CL
so our wonderful government rep, or what ever he is, had a holiday on our dime and his presence in the USA was meaningless.
Figures.
As was noted in an earlier story, a group of representatives went to the USA!
Did you miss that, or are you just choosing to ignore it in an attempt to bash one of our local government reps?
Todd has made a habit of tossing grenades at the negotiators from the sidelines, although in fairness his recent trip to Washington along with several other interested MP’s seems to have done no harm. He has no role and very little influence on the negotiations, and I would like him to represent me by taking a positive approach to issues that he can influence, or by spending more time working at the constituency level.
CL
So in other words have him ignore forestry even though its the biggest employer in his constituency he represents.
I think Trump wants an import adjustment tax, but the Republican Party establishment does not. Trump wants to pay for massive tax cuts with the boarder adjustment tax, which he can use to hit foreign countries like China and the US Fed with when they get involved in currency manipulation…. The globalists will do anything to slow that train down.
I think Minister Freeland on the Canadian side wants to tie softwood lumber to NAFTA and dairy. She wants the CETA example. Meanwhile the great divide is in how one accounts for public forest tenures in a market process and yet the federal government has no say in the matter as its a provincial issue.
Meanwhile in the housing market they have a near record new housing starts this year so far, so good conditions for everyone involved.
I think the answer is in how we in BC account for stumpage and access to resources for new entrants in a free enterprise process… If we solve that then we solve to proverbial Giordian knot. IMO
Eagleone….so the slight adjustment to the Fed borrowing rate didn’t blow up the tRump world….thank you for commenting on BC type issues…..
No it didn’t … Yet. I said it would show bad faith with a half point rise and they did a quarter point. As it was the stock market closed lower for eight straight days, the first time in two years. Then Yellen comes out yesterday and second guesses her own rate rise, but says she will stay on target anyways.
I still think the bubble blows though, as we only have ten more days of congress before the gov shut down debt ceiling fiasco, which the Dems says ‘benefits’ them. And the market is already priced for big tax cuts,but if the globalists can hold off a border adjustment tax, then the tax cut, which the markets are priced for, will never happen… Probably shave $4 Trillion off the US market by summer IMO.
The only thing that stops this IMO is if Trump can prove over the next two weeks that Obama was involved in clandestine surveillance of his transition team using the Russian angle to justify their Watergate like crimes. If that happens all bets are off.
Obama ? Seriously dude ? The FBI is investigating and has surveillance on tRump because he is corrupt and has ties to Russian banks. Obama…. hahaha.
Yes that is the democrat meme backed up with zero evidence.
The facts are that the congressional intelligence committee chairman says the reports he is now investigating had nothing to do with Russia and everything to do with inappropriate surveillance of the Trump transition team, the demasking of transition team members, and dissemination of those reports illegally for the purpose of sabatoging the new administration. Those are serious charges… Which may be why Obama left his bunker two blocks away from the White House for a vacation in a non extradition country of Polyponesia. It’s starting to look like the Obama team used the meme of a Russian connection to set up surveillance for what was essentially domestic spying on a political opponent… Similar to what he did with the IRS scandals.
Seriously, if there was a Russian connection they would have been yelling it from all the roof tops months ago. Anyone that has seen the file says no connections to Russia by Trump.
I don’t support everything Trump does, but at the end of the day it’s a disrespect to the institution of democracy if one thinks they can overthrow the elected president on a meme that has no basis in fact. Which is more dangerous an elected president, or a deep state that wants to go on manipulating currencies, the drug trade, and blackmailing politicians for their own power at any cost?
One thing for certain though, no matter how evil genius Putin is he did not force Obama to create Obama care and Clinton to not campaign in places like Wisconsin and Michigan so that Trump would get elected.
Digitus how come the media ignore the Clinton Russian connections. Oh Billy that dynamic sexual creature giving a $500,000 speech in Russia while her vile defender was secretary of state. Hey what about the uranium deal to Russia then 124 million shows up in the Clinton foundation after.
Question how is a speech worth 500 grand?
Digitus, I like my car.
Comments for this article are closed.