Canada Can't Cut Off U.S. Lumber Without Destroying Its Own Mill Towns — But Trump Taxed It Anyway

 

 

 #SoftwoodLumber#Lumber

15,000 board feet. That's how much framing lumber it takes to build a single American home — the wooden skeleton behind every wall. And roughly 1 in 4 boards used in the U.S. is Canadian. Of the lumber America imports, about 85% comes from a single country: Canada. 

 

America is the world's largest consumer of softwood lumber — and it has never been self-sufficient. Most federal forest sits in the Pacific Northwest, much of it managed for conservation, and a tree takes 30–80 years to grow. So for generations, the gap has been filled by Canada's slow-grown spruce, pine and fir — wood builders actually prefer because it's straight, stable and holds a nail. 

 

Then Trump escalated. In 2025, Commerce more than doubled the AD/CVD duties on Canadian softwood from ~14.5% to 35%, then added a 10% "national security" tariff on all timber — pushing the effective rate to ~45%, in the middle of a housing affordability crisis. A tariff isn't paid by Canada; it's paid by the U.S. importer, passed to the builder, and finally the buyer. The home builders' own association estimates tariffs and duties have added at least $10,000 to a new home. U.S. single-family starts fell ~7% to ~943,000, the weakest since the pandemic. And U.S. sawmill output has been flat for two years — you can't conjure a mill, or a forest, overnight. 

 

Why has this war lasted since 1982 — the longest-running U.S.–Canada trade dispute? Because it's really about who owns a forest. In Canada ~94% of timber is on public land with stumpage fees set by the provinces; in the U.S. ~90% is private, sold at auction. The U.S. calls that a subsidy. Neutral panels at the WTO and under NAFTA have repeatedly faulted the U.S. methodology (in one case, using Nova Scotia's private-land prices as a benchmark for other provinces). 

 

The honest other side: the U.S. lumber industry argues Canada's system distorts the market and that lumber is only ~1-2% of a home's price (land, labor and regulation matter more). And Canada is over-dependent too — it ships 60-70% of its production to the U.S., so it can't "cut off" the wood without devastating its own mill towns. The dependence runs both ways. 

 

You can put a tariff on a two-by-four. You cannot tariff away the need for a home. 

 

Sources: National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), Wood Central, RBC Economics, U.S. Congressional Research Service, Cornerstone Research, U.S. Lumber Coalition, Government of B.C.

 

 

 

         

Source:  The Decision Room