And sugar?
More Americans working plus non income tax revenue. A win-win.
What POTUS Trump should have did was open up all the National Forests to logging, the eco-twits have ruled the timber ind for far too long.
We should have general tarriffs across the board, like we had for 180 years.
Putting Americans back to work will do more for the housing industry than keeping lumber prices low for the unemployed to wish they could afford.
I was just pricing lumber for a new deck at Home Depot last week. 16 foot 6x6 posts, $44, that sounded pretty cheap to me.
I’ve built a house or two. 24% increase in lumber? I am not seeing that at the lumber yard.....
Isn't that what tariffs are supposed to do?
No one likes taxes.
No one likes tariffs.
Yet each has its place. Both feed the government beast and help make government larger. If we push for smaller government, we can get by with lower taxes and lower tariffs.
Tariffs have the advantage of protecting American businesses and keeping American workers employed. Taxes do neither of these things.
I would support “free trade” if other nations did the same. But they don’t. A lot of nations try to stack the deck and that helps their businesses and hurts our businesses. An increased push for tariffs is really just counter-balancing an unequal situation which has gone on too long.
There is no bigger burden than losing your job because other countries are allowed dump their product in the USA duty free.
“Tariffs on specific industries and products are corporate welfare, paid for by the American consumer, benefiting political cronies. “
What an idiotic statement.
Cheap foreign imports are taxes on the American worker who are the consumers as their jobs are sent overseas.
How do you expect “consumers” to buy anything if they don’t have jobs??
You are a traitor to your country by wanting cheap imports.
Why don’t you just move to those cheap foreign countries and get it over with??
ALL TAXES ARE TAXES ON CONSUMERS.
Duh.
Why is this criticism only raised with tariffs?
It’s like everyone in the media works for China.
The only mistake here is to regard this issue as a single dimensional deal.
1: I am not in favor of tariffs.
2: Canada has been dumping super cheap softwood over the past year or so.
3: Whatever price ramp is occurring right now may very well be influenced by tariffs
4: But there have been some pretty serious wildfires in Canada’s wood producing areas and that has affected the amounts they have been able to produce.
So I am not saying thing “X” is causing thing “Y”. There are generally multiple causes and this IMO is a case in point. Thus, when I read an article that says “X” is right now causing “Y” while ignoring “Z”, it undercuts the credibility of the article.
Unfortunately this is true. Some things need to be left alone. Tariffs on items of necessity should be left alone or it is counter productive.
Look at what happened when Obama imposed the tariff on imported tires, now lower income people just trying to get to work almost have to take out a loan to buy a set of tires. They are now so expensive that folks are actually trading in their car for one with new tires rather than buy new ones for the car they have. The payments are the same $200 dollars a month and they saved the cost of a set of tires. And for some the cost of a set of tires is even more than what the car is worth.
Let’s not forget the millions of acres of prime forest in the Northwest that is off limits due to the “endangered” spotted owl because the EPA claims that they have to have old growth forests to survive.
Yet many here advocate for even more tariffs.
Tariffs are taxes in another form.
We don’t have a ‘damaged’ trade relationship with the United States. We’ve always had a good relationship with the US and I’m sure we will work out any of these issues honourably from both sides. Including if we need to rework outdated NAFTA....
Tell that to all the people who used to work in the US wood products industry, now without jobs, thanks to Canadian subsidies to their timber industry.
The canadians have been dumping lumber on the US market for a long time. Add to that the NFS closing off entire regions to logging in the NW, while not allowing any thinning for fire or pest control, and you have the price discrepancies that you see today.
Of course the canadians could have waited until our domestic producers were completely wiped out, then jacked the prices up through the roof, which apparently is the ideal outcome for all of the FRee traders around here.