[beaver fever]

I've explained this on several threads in the past.

1) The Canadian stumpage fee system is not a subsidy and every dispute mechanism has agreed that it isn't

2) As I argued on a thread in 2004 the Canadian stumpage fee system only requires lumber producers to pay for the trees that they cut in a given year. When lumber prices are low they are not penalized by overhead costs for wood they cannot sell profitably. That allows lumber companies to scale their production based on present market conditions.

3) In the American auction system producers have to buy their wood at the highest price today regardless of the price of the finished product down the road. Which means you are committed to pricing finished product without knowing what the final wholesale price on the world market will be.

4) The result is the American producers can't make long term infrastructure and production decisions because their hostage to spot prices on the commodity markets.

The Canadian system actually ensures that producers can scale their production regardless of the market price of their product during rapid price swings.

In other words the Canadian system is more business friendly in an industry with low margins and very high capital investment demands.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if American producers adopted the Canadian stumpage system they would realize the benefits immediately.

[Nathan Zachary]

The thing about stumpage, is Americans complained that it wasn't enough! Imagine that. The argument was Canadians didn't have as much cost as americans who had to pay higher fees for access to private lands. Of course it was rediculous, but Bush needed the democrats in the senate at the time, so he went along with it.
Same thing for cattle, same thing for hogs. It's pure protectionism, a violation of the NAFTA agreement.
We Americans are being fooled into thinking we don't have any cattle with BSE. it occurs naturally in every herd, one in every thousand. We should be finding at least 300 cows a year, but we don't. The Japs test every single cow, and find about 100 a year in their own herds, as do the brits, Europeons.

As mentioned, the Canadians just won the hog tarrif issue.
There is a reason that the hog barns are all in Canada, because all the enviromentalists down here prevent them from being built here. We can't keep up with our own demand. But producers here cry, because they can't make a good product.
Canadian producers are able to lower their feed costs because feed is cheaper in Canada, it's not inflated and subsidized like it is here. We put tarrif on Canadian feed, so it isn't available here for our producers. It' an endless vicious circle. TARRIFS don't work!

[crz]

Isnt government control lovely? Nice. BTW. The timber companys have cut off the Canadian suppliers from this area. Why? Becuase if they didnt we would'nt supply them. So they had a choice. Either quit buying Canadian roundwood on the Canadian dollar or face a complete shutdown from this side.