Canada Statehood Drive

[Hangtime]

Three feet wide, 4 feet tall.

Attack of the hockey puck dwarves, armed with Molsen Empties and Leaf Blowers.

[Elfenwolf]

Originally posted by Shuckins


The businessmen (I'm thinking mainly of American timer industries) should be kept out because I have seen firsthand what they have done to the Southern Hardwood Forests of Arkansas.

Regards, Shuckins

Actually the Canadians are dumping timber so cheap that they've made it more profitable for the sawmills to buy Canadian timber to cut into lumber instead of cutting our own timber, at least in Northern California. Add that to the closure of GP and LP sawmills and the subsequent dumping of lumber and the future of the California timber industry is looking pretty bleak.

Harwood Mill in Branscomb, Mendocino County, California is the last mill to stay open in the North County area (down from 50 or so sawmills back in the late 50s), but they've cut back from two shifts to one and they bus in migrant workers for the non-skilled jobs. Coupled with the recent decision to ban commercial rock cod fishing the economy of the North Coast of California is in the toilet. It's sad seeing people lose their livelihood through no fault of their own.

[Thrawn]

Originally posted by Elfenwolf
It's sad seeing people lose their livelihood through no fault of their own.

I'll say, 15 000 Canadians have lost their jobs because of Bush's tarrifs.  Free trade my butt.  Capitalism my butt as well.

"It takes a lot of two-by-fours to build a house. That's why Canada exported about $10 billion worth of softwood lumber last year to the United States. But now a trade war threatens the wooden exports.
Part of the conflict arises from the Bush administration's backing of the U.S. forest industry's bid to hit Canadian lumber with billions of dollars in duties. Canadians exporting south of the border are charged a 19.3 per cent countervailing duty — a tax applied on imports found to be unfairly subsidized — that the American government imposed on Canadian exporters earlier this year. Then there's the anti-dumping duty of 12.57 per cent introduced in October, 2001. Dumping is a term used to describe the sale of goods to another country at less than what they cost to produce."

http://cbc.ca/news/indepth/background/softwood_lumber.html

[Elfenwolf]

Thrawn, thanks for the link. My interpatition of the dispute is that even with the import tariffs it's still cheaper for lumber companies to buy logs from Canada, ship them down here (or as LP would like to do, ship them to Mexico) for processing.

Obviously the timber harvesting rules in Canada are much more lax than they are in California so maybe GWB is attempting to level the playing field. Irregardless having our few remaining sawmills left cutting Canadian timber by migrant workers doesn't do the average American citizen any good.

It is intresting to note the corporations pressuring GWB to tariff Canadian timber under the guise of protecting American jobs are the very same companies who have been closing sawmills here and reopening them overseas, though.

[Thrawn]

I imagine that before the tariffs US lumber companies were getting fediddleed and now with the tariffs, we're getting fediddleed.

Makes sense that Bush would put in the tariffs to protect American workers and companies...if it wasn't for that damn NAFTA.  We got plenty fediddleed in many other industries because of it, but in the end we said,  "Yeah, we can compete with you, let's knock down those trade barriers."  And then this happens.

[Shuckins]

If Canada is dumping timber on the American market it doesn't seem to have made a difference in what is happening in southern Arkansas.  One of our local timber companies recently sold out to a rival company.  Now they're cutting more pine and hardwood than ever before, especially hardwood.  At this rate, there were will be very little hardwood left in two years time.  

In five years this place will look like Mordor.

Regards, Shuckins

[Soda]

The timber harvesting rules in Canada are not more lax than in the US, if anything in recent years they have become extremely tight.  The styles of logging, especially on the west coast, have become restrictive to the point that they can't make money selling lumber anymore since the cost of raw logs is brutal.  I have some great pictures of helicopters plucking logs off of hillsides so they don't have to put roads or clearcut areas.... you can't tell me plucking logs in 2's and 3's with a helicopter doesn't cost some major $$.

The biggest reason for cheap Canadian lumber is that everything in Canada done to cut the trees is paid for in CDN bucks which hold only 63% of the value of a US greenback.  That makes our logs cheap.  It also makes most other Canadian exports (paper, minerals, oil, etc) all cheap too but that doesn't stop the US from importing those.

Grew up in a logging town, with saw mills, and paper mills producing products from tree chips.  US tariffs have put a lot of people out of work even in what used to be my small neck of the woods.  A lot of medium sized communities have all but dissappeared.  It'll only get worse too, know people who have been to mills in some 3rd world places, no environmental considerations there, and they produce stuff even cheaper.

-Soda
The Assassins.