[Jethro Tull]

SCREW THE HOSERS, EH?

[bluester]

Isolation.

[Rustynailww]

is bush a 21st century hoover?

[denydenydeny]

I wonder how often the Cato Institute gets quoted in the press on the subject of, say, "living-wage" legislation? Or progressive taxation?

[kidd]

Bush must be going after the Buchannan voters. He's not winning anyone else's respect with recent bonehead moves (and I doubt he's winning much Buchannan voter respect either).

[JamesWilson]

Do you know why Bush is imposing the lumber tax or how he can do so legally?

[Ahban]

Hold on Jethro, I have been critical of W lately, but this article leaves out important facts.

Did you know the Candian government is letting their timber industry cut down trees on state lands for free? That is a very short sighted move. It cannot be sustained at this rate forever and amounts to 'dumping'.

In other words, the problem in this specific case is not a lack of competitiveness on the part of the U.S. timber industry, instead the problem is they are fighting what amounts to a state subsidy from the Canadians.

That situation is one of the few times special tariffs are justified. W made a good call on this one.

[dalereed]

This is totally stupid!!!

He should have removed the environmental and "endangered species" regulations that have been placed against logging in this country if he wanted to make our lumber competitive.

Tarrifs won't help anything as far as lumber is concerned until the US companies are allowed to produce it.

[jlogajan]

Thanks Georgie for raising the prices of everything I have to buy. You're a real sweetie.

[ccmay]

SCREW THE HOSERS, EH?

Why? They are fighting by our side in Afghanistan. That's a lot more than anyone else except the English and Aussies are doing.

Thanks, Canada!

-ccm

[Great Dane]

Heard last night that Canada will not retaliate, word has it that the tariff itself will do that, by the way, the tariff is 29%.

[yoe]

Listen to the p****** and moaning! America has resources here and we must use some of them in spite of the cries from the EPA and all like-minded tree huggers. As for the homebuilders, this may slow down an overheated market, which is already over, built.

Question...are Florida citrus farmers subsidized by fed. Dollars?

[CPT Clay]

Why tarriff on lumber?

[mercy]

Does anyone have any idea how many BIG trees there are in Canada? We could tear down every house over twenty years old in America and build one twice as big and we could not put a dent in the forests of Canada. The trees would still be growing back faster than we could cut them down. Trees in Canada will always be cheaper than trees in America because we have fewer of them and we have put most of them off limits to lumbermen.

Personally I am pissed over this. I am just about to start a new home and this will boost my lumber costs. I betcha the lumber yards are resetting their computers right now. They don't wait for the wholesale costs to go up. Any excuse. ANY excuse. Damnit this is gonna cost me $10,000. Thanks a lot W. Yer really turning out to be my guy in DC. Why don't you let a few more terrs in while your at it. Gotta be good for the security business.

[Snowyman]

SCREW THE HOSERS, EH?

Voltaire called Canada "a few acres of snow". What he didn't know was a lot of those acres were covered with trees that now to provincial governments represent stumpage. Standard practice, I believe it is law in some provinces, is to plant 3 seedlings for each tree cut down. Canada cuts down less than 1% of her forest each year and has 20% more trees now than 100 years ago. But the cost of planting those 100 million plus trees each year is paid for by the Lumber companies.Add that cost on top of stumpage. Canadian lumber companies have computerized and modernized their mills far beyond the productivity of many found in the states. It's called Capitalism, staying efficient enough to make a legitimate, unsubsidized profit. Canadian lumber companies, Tembec for example, export wood products to 50 countries.

The American consumer will pay a minimum of $1500 per new house constructed and 3 to 400,000 first time buyers will be disqualified from getting a mortgage.

The American softwood lobby, working for Americans? Right, Who's screwing who?

[luvzhottea]

Didn't PJB also advocate tarrifs? Do they work?

[junta]

I'm a PJB fan myself. That said this might be a bad move for the Dubya and one that won't help the big American multi-nationals all that much. Due to our easy credit the financial bubble went from tech to housing and it is about to burst and this will hurt the little guy not the dot.com yuppies who went back to work at Starbucks. Dubya by adding this little cost to the housing industry could be made to look bad by demagogs looking for an easy scapegoat. When I heard that he did this I only cringed because all my friends are in the housing business and when the bubble bursts they will be looking for easy answers as most people do when the SHTF.

[VA Advogado]

Here we go again. The Bush trade philosophy is something out of the Cuba school of economics.

[fella]

HOT Dang! My 60 acres of hardwood timber just became valuable enough to sell.$$$$$$$$$

[xp38]

This thread calls for a rousing round of I'm a lumberjack and I'm ok....

[Barnacle]

How about slapping a tariff on illegal immigrants?

[Republican Wildcat]

What is he doing? This is another act of bad economics.