Zoltan van Heyningen, Executive Director, US Lumber Coalition, provided a US perspective on softwood lumber duties at the Global Wood Summit in Vancouver. Heyningen clarified the difference between policy-driven trade action (that can result in tariffs) and legal processes that administer US trade laws (that can result in antidumping and countervailing duties). According to Heyningen:

• “The imposition of duties against Canadian lumber imports is not a policy debate. It is a legal process that is centered around the concept of a rules-based trading system that allows free flow of trade between nations—when one industry operates on different principles and then ships its finished product into the market of another.”
• “From the US perspective, the softwood lumber trade case has been extremely effective, yielding results that one would expect. Mainly, pushing out unfairly traded imports and allowing the US industry to grow towards its full potential. And the data shows that is precisely what we’ve seen since 2016, which is when the trade cases were filed.”
• “Regarding the disposition of the 80 CVD duties that have been paid and collected and being held by the US government. The majority of these collected duties will be liquidated into the US Treasury. Unlike Lumber Four, once the US won the appeal of the ITC Injury Determination—this is before the USMCA panel—these collected duties won’t be treated any differently than any custom duties paid or collected by US Customs. It becomes, in essence, US government revenue. Going forward, it is now just a question of the exact amounts at the margins, which will be determined by the appeals process of the various Administrative Reviews.”