Posted on 04/26/2017 5:25:18 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced Monday that the Trump Administration will raise the cost of new single family homes in the U.S. as part of its promise to “make America great again.”
Mr. Ross didn’t put it quite that way. He said the Administration will impose a 20% tariff on softwood lumber imports from Canada, which total about $5 billion at year. But that’s a lot of lumber and the tariff will add an additional $1 billion in new costs for U.S. construction. Most of those costs will be added to the price of new American housing, not counting the higher costs that will come as U.S. producers raise their prices to match the competition and pad their bottom lines.
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Yet while the cross-border haggling drags on, middle America is where the new lumber tariff will hit hardest. According to the National Association of Home Builders, 28% of U.S. softwood lumber purchases are Canadian imports and these are particularly important in the construction of single-family homes. Roughly 7% of the cost of an American home is the lumber and that cost is already up, on average, by some $3,000 this year. The Journal reports that “builders say lumber costs are already at the highest in a decade.” Labor shortages in construction, thanks in part to restrictions on immigration, are also pushing up costs.
With his announcement last week on steel and this week’s lumber action, Mr. Trump’s trade policy is coming into focus. He’ll use tariffs to restrict imports and appease domestic producers that have the best trade lawyers and lobbyists, while hoping consumers don’t notice the higher prices. Mr. Trump made it to the White House with the support of middle-class voters still yearning for the American dream.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
If there are ten more framers or roofers who are working instead of shooting heroin, I’m 100% for it.
MAGA.
And things from Mexico. But he is comforting the dreamers, so maybe you can feed your family that.. not! He has done some great exec orders, but those are just headliners... his real work is Amnesty.
These days, lumber and labor are only a small percentage of the cost of constructing a house. All the land associated regulatory costs have risen dramatically since the 1990’s, and the cost of copper (wiring and plumbing) have as well. Even roofing materials tripled in the 2000’s when oil prices jumped. That’s not even considering the increased costs of higher quality finish materials generally used today (tile, marble, etc).
I don’t recall seeing horror stories about the cost of building houses when these prices rose.
No you don't and making the over priced Canadian lumber 20% more costly should, along with some MAGA removal of EPA rules on logging, make American lumber more available and employ more American workers in the process.
A tariff on anything raised the price U.S. consumers pay.
It used to be, wet backs were cleaning up the job sites. Now, they're the framers, roofers, masons, etc.,. Mr. and Mrs. New Homeowner are stuck with an, in plain English, pile of shit home.
The Indians answering customer service calls aren't reducing your bills, it's going to company profits and coming out as big bonuses for big boys. All the while you're screaming into a phone about getting $32.00 cut from your cell phone bill.
That's the beauty of tariffs. Bye-Bye Crony Capitalist! You can tell by how loudly they are winning to their mouthpieces at the WSJ.
Tariffs and rent seeking always help the protected class, at least temporarily.
It will allow harvesting of our forests by American companies. I don’t know how many lumber companies and sawmills in the Pacific Northwest were shutdown and their employees forced to become welfare dependents.
Yes in the short term there will be cost increases. In the long term the costs will come down and thousands of people will go off of the government teat and become self-supporting and proud of themselves once again that they can support themselves and their families.
Then Canada will have to REMOVE it’s tariffs to lower the price back down.
If Trump did this unilaterally, that would be bad. But since Canada does it to our products, we have to do it back OR our wood industry goes south - OOPS!!! That part already happened because the previous administrations were PUSSIES.
>>You don’t help the middle class by making housing more expensive.<<
Principles have costs.
The reason we are the patsies of the entire world has been the unwillingness to shoulder the costs that go along with REAL fair free trade.
Housing costs rise all the time, like CarmichaelPatriot says. Lumber is certainly not the driving factor. Land prices, utility hookups, regulation and old-fashioned greed are larger influences.
Despite what some economist and the housing industry would have you believe, for the country as a whole to invest as much time and energy as we do into building subdivisions and acres of McMansions is probably a bad investment. For individuals it is usually a good investment, but for the nation as a whole, we might well benefit from putting our time and energy and capital into industries or items that bring about better return than just space to live in and property with which to speculate.
I don't think this tariff is likely to have the intended results. U.S. production will be maintained, but it will be mainly for our domestic market. Meanwhile, production north of the border will continue unabated -- and they will undercut U.S. producers for export markets.
Construction of new homes, not homes in general. We’ll see.
“You don’t help the middle class by making housing more expensive.”
Maybe it hurts a little in the short term, but you DO help the remaining Middle Class from falling into the Poverty Class by making it less desirable to import ‘stuff’ that we in North America should be producing ourselves!
I’m all for figuratively, ‘closing the borders’ as well as physically.
Canada doesn’t want our milk? Well, bite me! Wisconsin doesn’t want your lumber!
Mr. Ross didn’t put it quite that way. He said the Administration will impose a 20% tariff on softwood lumber imports from Canada, which total about $5 billion at year. But that’s a lot of lumber and the tariff will add an additional $1 billion in new costs for U.S. construction. Most of those costs will be added to the price of new American housing, not counting the higher costs that will come as U.S. producers raise their prices to match the competition and pad their bottom lines.
Yet while the cross-border haggling drags on, middle America is where the new lumber tariff will hit hardest. According to the National Association of Home Builders, 28% of U.S. softwood lumber purchases are Canadian imports and these are particularly important in the construction of single-family homes. Roughly 7% of the cost of an American home is the lumber
...
So that’s 20% of 28% of 7%, or .3 %. I wonder why it wasn’t expressed that way.
That’s three tenths of a percentage of the price of a home, worst case. Most likely builders can find other ways to cut costs.
Looks like the same tariff which has been in effect for the last 15 years. The negotiations for continuing it has been going on for 2 years.
The money is supposed to go to US mills to offset cheap logs from the Canadian govt.
Right you are. $1 billion in added costs is not as much as one would think.
NEW RESIDENTIAL
CONSTRUCTION
MARCH 2017
Building Permits: 1,260,000
Housing Starts: 1,215,000
Housing Completions: 1,205,000.
I wish every globalist at the No-Wall Street Urinal would simply stuff it. NO COUNTRY EVER IMPORTED AND RETAILED ITSELF INTO PROSPERITY.
Please you don’t help the middle class by letting foreign governments dump subsidized products into your nation destroying their jobs.
Take your neocon nonsense elsewhere. Nearly 40 years now your arguments have allowed the direct theft of this nations jobs and wealth, so a select few could pas their pockets getting their 30 pieces of silver for being the traitors they are.
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