I know, let's solve this problem by adding tariffs on timber from Canada who openly supports their timber industry.
Alternatively, you could fix the problems at home!
( Might be a little tainted as I grew up when the spotted owl shutdown the living for entire towns in Washington and our fathers had to go to Alaska and Canada for years to make money to send home. )
Just speculating here but it's probably the big guys / Multi National lobbying the US Gov for tariffs knowing full well they can can manage since they have assets on both sides of the border and drive the Independents and little guys out of business causing more consolidation and getting rid of any potential competition. It's the same as the Rich advocating for higher taxes, trying to keep less people from getting rich. I know a few guys in the Oil/Blending business and they are under constant assault from the Majors who keep advocating for more and more regulations hoping to bankrupt the smaller players and consolidating their grip on the Industry. You can't take anything anymore at face value, there is always an angle.
Am I understanding right that this would mean US would be incentivized to not export lumber (since domestic demand would grow in response to the increase in canadian lumber prices), and conversely, Canada would just fill the export gap left open by the US, leaving Canada in a stronger, more diversified trade position and the US in a worse, nationalist position? Or am I missing something?
- The inventory of raw timber ( the type you see in log yards ) has grown too large.
- Lumber mills are lowering the amount they will pay for raw timber as a result. As well as the rest of the end lumber market.
- This causes timber companies profit per foot to drop.
- The timber companies decide to "export" raw timber overseas at a loss.
- This in turn raises the rate the Lumber mills and Lumber consumers pay out pacing the original loss on "exported" timber.
It is important to also note, most of this timber came from public lands to begin with.
The overall point is OUR resources were exported at a loss so OUR prices would increase. Forests are part of the wealth of our country. Letting a timber company send it overseas to increase domestic timber prices should be illegal.
The U.S. argument amounts to nothing more than "we don't like that they have a lot of trees and that that makes our trees less valuable".
Canada is a net exporter to the U.S. of raw materials and a net importer from the U.S. of finished goods. The only reason they attack lumber is because unlike every other raw material, lumber doesn't make its way into many things that the U.S. exports.
https://www.lesprom.com/en/news/13_biggest_lumber_companies_...
*Four of the top ten largest firms are based in B.C. (West Fraser, Canfor, Interfor and Tolko), with the first three holding substantial sawmilling assets in the U.S.*
So it seems these Corps own assets on both sides of the border and it isn't clear how these tariffs help them. From what I understand (possibly wrong,) there has even been more consolidation in the Lumber Industry in the last couple of years and like 5 Companies own all the Sawmills on both sides of the border.
Maybe that's looking at it the wrong way; tariffs and trade battles are going to happen anyway, if I have operations on both sides of a border in a way I'm hedged against their impact.
The type of lumber used to frame American houses is (well, used to be) quite cheap. Concrete is like $10 per cubic foot. While, a timber framed wall is mostly air. An 18x8 foot wall made of timber would take about 16 boards to make and take an experienced team less than 20 minutes to put up. That's $100 or so in material costs at current (extremely high) prices, plus maybe $100 in labor (this is pretty hard to estimate, actually).
That same wall would be like $700 if made from concrete. And labor costs would be probably equally as expensive because those forms take a long time to assemble. They need to be shipped in, assembled, left to cure, disassembled, then hauled away. While lumber just needs to be dropped off the back of a truck into a pile in the yard.
They are brought on site and erected by cranes and pile drivers to build the frame of a house somewhat like with large timber. The panels are set across beams to fill in floor areas, and walls are closed with non-load bearing elements, whether brick, blocks, stucco, drywall, etc. I am not sure how well this method works for seismically active areas though, where you would need to tie those in-fill wall areas into the structure.
Concrete is used as a base for apartment (like four or five over two) but wood still makes up the majority, and there aren’t a whole lot of residential projects in the country built as massive concrete tower blocks outside of some specific regions.
Partially because until recently, wood was the most plentiful and cost-effective building material in parts of the US. It is far more seismically resilient than brick or concrete.
It is also much easier to modify if you want to add a window or other opening - cutting an opening in a concrete or cinder block wall is much harder.
Wood, when responsibly harvested, also sequesters C02.
That all said, it's possible we'll see an uptick in the popularity of alternative structural materials to wood - but traditional concrete has an absolutely massive carbon footprint, and low-carbon and low cost concrete alternatives aren't readily available on the market at this time.
Some areas, such as regions of Florida or Arizona for example, have substantial historical housing stock made from concrete. However, the majority of new construction is wood for the reasons stated above.
There are not (to my knowledge) any building codes that prohibit concrete construction for residential.
The US has vast timber forests, so it is inexpensive, and timber (or steel) framing works well for earthquake resistant construction. A large part of the US is a seismic hazard zone and the building regulations reflect that. You can find older neighborhoods with unreinforced masonry throughout the US but those date from a time before they had modern building regulations and before the extent of earthquake risks were fully understood.
Not really. No more than the ice mafia made the inuit build igloos out of ice. People do with what they have. The eastern seaboard is chock full of trees. When the settlers arrived, they used what was readily available. It's far easier for settlers to make homes out of wood than stone/rocks/etc and concrete didn't exist back in the 1600s/1700s. And as the borders of the country expanded westward, the style of homes made its way west as well.
The reason? The region also lacks trees. They have an abundance of the raw materials for cement, but not wood.. So that is what they used.
Cement is also a terrible material for many climates. Here (ontario) the freeze/thaw cycle causes it to crack unless you use a lot of costly methods to prevent this.
We're currently in the process of building a house and current lumber prices (because of covid mainly) are definitely impacting costs, to the point that it's one of the first thing that both our architect, and then builders mentioned.
Everybody involved in the trade have mentioned the idea of waiting an extra year before building, mostly because of lumber prices.
The post-covid effect may complicate things furthermore.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-12/u-s-lumbe...
Based on what products this is targeting and the current domestic labor situation here it appears that this will absolutely not be the case.
He also tariffed Chinese concrete at the same time.
The reason it went up so much is (like any other business), contractors and manufacturers need to preserve their profit margins, multiplying the impact of the tariffs for new home builders.
It also allowed domestic producers to hike their prices (which they did). Also, the tariffs caused many substitutions of slightly more expensive (but now cheaper) materials, leading to bizarre shortages and more price hikes.
Then, covid hit and now this. It’s a complete disaster.
Is the department of commerce actively trying to get Trump back in in 2024, or do they just like inflation, homelessness and high interest rates?
Those tariffs made sense in 2018 but they don't make sense in 2021. Everyone considers USA an export destination where every country dumps their products, that means some degree of unemployment is unavoidable because these countries run trade surpluses on purpose and they won't stop them. Right now unemployment is on a heavy downward trend, which means there is no need for protectionism anymore.
Pierre Trudeau was the one who opened trade with China. He was also a close personal friend of Fidel Castro. Interesting how the son is following in the footsteps toward authoritarianism.
The incredible demand, coupled with supply chain troubles, has driven up the price of lumber here nearly 300% A 8' 2x4 was $2.95 this time last year, today it's $10.
I hope this cools the exports of lumber from Canada, and we see the prices move back towards a sane level.
Your implying that Canadian logging companies are just going to sell cheaper lumber to Canadians. I would say that that's just one piece of the picture.
Canada's economy is based upon selling resources to the United States (mostly oil). The United States historically has abused their monopoly on buying Canadian resources. Since the US is a much larger and stronger country, the US essentially sets the rules.
If American companies stop buying Canadian lumber, it will be a net negative for Canada. We have a massive deficit due to our massive covid stimulus spending. We need American money more than they need Canadian lumber.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_s...
Oil & Gas accounts for less than 10% of the Canadian economy.
