No comment on the economy.

"however, most producers were shipping lots of product before the implementation of the softwood lumber agreement which added a non-refundable 15% tax to their product."

How quickly we forget.

There have been production increases over the past few years .... now we are coming down from what was in part an artificially high number because those free-enterprisers to the south of Canada decided to fiddle with the marketplace and our producers decided to flood the market when the price was artificially high due to protectioninsm by their industry. Add to that the excessive shipments and the change to the AAC due to the MPB, and the result we see now of dropping prices was inevitable.

A lull in the housing market has been coincidental. That will not continue for long. the population of the USA is predicted to increase by another 50 million at the lower end and 100 million at the upper end in the next two decades. Couple that with the aging population, and we will see an extraordinary demand for housing in the USA.

Prices may have to drop by building smaller dwelling units once again, or by even subdividing some of the larger houses which have been built in the last couple of decades.

That has happened before. All one has to do is to walk down parts of urban America in the residential areas immediately adjacent to the centre core to find the larger houses from the turn of the 19th to the 20th century which were generally converted to several flats prior to and after the second world war.

The official calcultion from the US Census Bureau
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html

Based on that the population incrases by 50 million per decade. Using 3 or so per dwelling unit, that would mean about 1.5 million dwelling units will need to be created in the USA each year. That is on the low side since the number of people per dwelling unit has been coming down. Those "dwelling units" may be two per larger house as extended families "share" accommodation