Commerce confirms continued Canadian lumber subsidies and dumping

Commerce confirms continued Canadian lumber subsidies and dumping    The U.S. Commerce Department released its final “administrative review” findings Tuesday, citing that Canadian softwood lumber was subsidized and dumped on the U.S. market at a combined rate of 21.2 percent in 2002-03.
   The department set the new countervailing duty rate at 17.2 percent and the new average antidumping rate at 4 percent. The United States will collect the administrative review rate on imports that occurred from late May 2002 through the first quarter of 2003.
   Under U.S. law, the money collected will be distributed to the U.S. lumber industry that supported the cases. The department reexamined its June preliminary subsidy estimate.
   The U.S. lumber lobby praised the Commerce Department’s findings, although it alleges that the actual Canadian lumber subsidy rate is higher, at least 35 to 40 percent.
   “All the U.S. industry has ever requested is an end to Canadian lumber subsidies and dumping through open and competitive timber and log markets,” said W.J. “Rusty” Wood, chairman of the Washington-based Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports, in a statement Thursday. “Until then, we will enforce our rights to relief under the U.S. trade laws.”