James Robbins’ family has been in the lumber business in Maine since 1881… What followed was decades of expansion. Robbins Lumber Inc. first began selling through a New Brunswick wholesaler, later branching out across Atlantic Canada and eventually establishing a distribution operation in Nova Scotia. Today, Robbins, 81, remains actively involved as a consultant to the fifth-generation family business, which his children have owned and run since 2013. Now, though, a 25 per cent Canadian tariff on the company’s lumber, imposed this month in response to new United States tariffs on Canadian goods, is making that cross-border trade significantly harder. …The real frustration, Robbins said, is that neither side wants the relationship to end. …But their ties run deeper than commerce. Nearly 58,000 customers in northern and eastern Maine rely entirely on New Brunswick’s New Brunswick Power Corp. for electricity delivery. The Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline crosses the border, as do freight rail lines and roads. …Robbins has never experienced a dispute such as the current one… He could replace Canadian sales with customers in the eastern U.S. if it had to, he said, but he doesn’t want to. [Access to this story may require a subscription to the National Post]