TreeFrogNews recently published an opinion by its Editor Kelly McCloskey. As is often the case for those trying to defend Canada’s softwood lumber trade practices, they must rely on arguments that are irrelevant to the current round of antidumping and countervailing duty cases against unfairly traded Canadian lumber imports. In this instance, Mr. McCloskey’s criticism of the zeroing methodology is beside the point, because the US Department of Commerce did not use zeroing when calculating the antidumping duty rates that are currently in place.

Canada’s unfair trade practices are real. The harm to US companies, workers, and communities is real. Government aid to Canada’s lumber industry, whether provincial or federal, is a subsidy, because providing government money to an industry is the very definition of a subsidy no matter how it is presented. Canada is entitled to its own system and to decide what role the Canadian government plays with respect to its lumber industry. Canada is not entitled to unrestrained access to the US market for its massive excess lumber capacity and production while that industry benefits from subsidies and engages in well-documented dumping practices.

Canada is also not entitled to maintain a USMCA Chapter 10 dispute settlement system that is different from any other bilateral or multilateral dispute settlement system. US courts exist for both domestic and foreign companies and nations to appeal the decisions of the US Department of Commerce and the US International Trade Commission. Just like in Canada, the origin of the US legal system is English common law. There is no basis to suggest that Canada would not receive a fair hearing before U.S. judges, such that it is necessary to replace them with foreign citizens. Our courts afford Canadians – and all foreign industries and governments – the same level of accountability and oversight with respect to U.S. trade law that any US citizen enjoys.

Lastly, I want to remind Mr. McCloskey that Canada enforces its own antidumping and countervailing duty laws against unfairly traded imports into Canada. Why does Canada recognize the importance and fairness of those laws for the Canadian economy while arguing that such laws should not be applied to its own unfair trade practices?