'He cuts down trees, he skips and jumps, and pays a high ta-riff.'
Posted on 04/24/2017 10:56:58 PM PDT by Helicondelta
The Trump administration is hitting Canada with stiff tariffs of up to 24% on lumber shipped into the United States.
These are the first tariffs imposed by President Trump, who during his election campaign threatened to use them on imports from both China and Mexico. The decision on Monday is bound to lead to a standoff and could stoke fears of a trade war between the US and Canada, two of the world's largest trade powers.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the tariffs, or taxes, announced Monday evening were being imposed after trade talks on dairy products fell through.
Trump's tariffs come as the US, Canada and Mexico prepare to renegotiate NAFTA
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
Trump always makes sure they take him seriously. I doubt that he’d really want to increase the price of timber by a quarter but it’s always best to negotiate from strength.
Doesn’t read like he MIGHT do this.
And why would prices go up a even a quarter because Canada is knocked out of the market?
Plenty of trees in the US.
And if I have to pay a quarter more to give US folk jobs, i dont give a ####.
Lumber is already high. Meanwhile, eastern Canada is given the green light to continue and expand efforts to dump too many parts made of steel and other manufactured products in the U.S.A. Currency manipulation is certainly a problem there.
I bought some plywood at Home Depot last week. Needed some 3/4 inch 4x8 foot sheets with nice perfect smooth sides. Found some, only $24.99 a sheet. The worker helping me load it on a cart said he was surprised at the price, as they previously sold similar plywood for $35 to $40 a sheet. It was labeled made in China. I was shocked because plywood I saw at Orchard Supply and elsewhere cost more and was inferior in quality, being warped, knotted and poorly put together. This stuff was very high quality. Hard for Americans to compete with very low priced imports coming in. I’m just surprised at the lumber coming in from outside, when not too long ago everything was locally made.
'He cuts down trees, he skips and jumps, and pays a high ta-riff.'
It is the cost of regulation, period that keeps American lumber product prices high and the quality relatively low. Regulation that keeps it economically blocked from upgrading equipment and processes. Regulation that keeps high priced human labor doing menial physical tasks that can easily be done by modern machinery.
We must keep those wagon wheel and buggy whip workers employed!
As a nation, we became the powerhouse of productivity in the world because we embraced technology in production of virtually everything at one time. Then all of a sudden, that advancement came to a halt and thus so did our place.
The Canadian lumber thing has been ongoing since 1992.
Spotted owl’s fault
It’s not only regulations. What you described is China’s SOP at taking over and killing another nations industry.
1: Flood the market with below cost alternatives at the same quality.
This is a government subsidised step. Local industry can’t compete and is driven out of business.
2. With competition out of the way, replace the quality goods with crap product at the same or higher prices. Profit.
China’s done this all over the world.
1. It costs a lot of money to subsidize an industry to the point where it drives its competitors out of business.
2. Even after you've driven your competitors out of business it's almost impossible to generate sufficient profits to make up for years of losses. Your customers will stop buying what you're selling if the prices are too high, the quality is poor, or both.
3. Products change so rapidly that there's a good chance your industry is obsolete by the time you drive your competitors out of business.
I blame little Pierre for this. He is good at feminist issues, touchy feely kind of stuff. Trudeau went to Washington and formed a working group with Ivanka on women in business. Great optics for the liberal rubes back home but did he discuss real issues like this one? When the rubber hits the road little Pierre is way out of his depth dealing with Trump.
You are going to lots of whining and caterwauling about this coming out of Ottawa. In fact I don't think little Pierre knows about or cares about the economy. Hopefully, it will be his downfall.
But let us suppose there is no accommodation and American homebuilders are confronted with a 20 to 25% increase in the cost of lumber, that is not only bad for homebuyers, that is consumers, but it is bad overall for the economy because it is one of many building blocks like steel or energy which makes an economy work well or drives inflation. One thing a nation $20 trillion in debt cannot sustain is increased inflation.
It is not just your willingness to pay a bit more for lumber, it is the whole economy which can be seriously affected.
International trade is not a win-win situation in every instance, however, when it is not the cure can also be a win-lose situation. It is easy to campaign on trade reform but when one governs those who are injured by the so-called "cure" have a right to be heard. The overall effects on the economy have to be considered. During a campaign we can call those who raise these issues "globalists" but when we govern we find out they are also citizens.
Fast and strong riposte after Canada opted to kick our dairy farmers in the gonads. The cheap lumber scam has been going on a long time and is a convenient vehicle for Trump to hit back.
I was told this by a businessman who knew about it. A quick web search brings up “The China Price”. Yep it’s been thoroughly studied and is real.
This is the equivalent of imposing an import tariff on foreign coal to protect a coal mining industry that has been effectively shut down by the EPA.
With competition out of the way, replace the quality goods with crap product at the same or higher prices. Profit.
1. The goods were never "quality goods" to begin with.
2. None of the "China Price" sources you referenced say anything about this step in the process -- because this step never happens. As soon as China raises the price and/or reduces the quality, the customer buys the same crap from somewhere else. That's why countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Indonesia have been supplanting much of the manufacturing in China in recent years.
To be fair to Trump, he has campaigned on reforming the regulatory Empire and he has even cut his own regulations to begin dismantling the regulations which make timber, for example, uncompetitive. Trump might not be able to control the timing of his negotiations over NAFTA with his ability to bring EPA to heal and so he has to go first on the trade offensive before he cleans up the costly regulatory environment. Normally before any tariff is considered, all of the government imposed roadblocks to efficient and effective competition should be removed to the degree that it is possible to do so without really harming the environment, for example.
Until Trump it is been conservative doctrine that American inability to compete internationally is more the fault of bad domestic policy than it is the fault of unfair competition. Unfortunately, the Rino response has been not to attack regulations but to resort to crony capitalism.
Let us see if Trump can turn the reactions against the tariff into reactions against runaway environmentalism.
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