U.S. lumber industry praises WTO panel report

U.S. lumber industry praises WTO panel report    The U.S. lumber industry praised a World Trade Organization panel report that found that there’s no impediment to the U.S. treatment of Canadian lumber dumping as an unfair trade practice.
   “This report provides a major victory for U.S. sawmills, mill workers and landowners,” said W.J. “Rusty” Wood, chairman of the Washington-based Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports, in a statement. “Dumping of Canadian lumber, in addition to massive subsidization of Canadian lumber production, is decimating the U.S. lumber industry.”
   The WTO panel report released this week rejected Canada’s multiple claims against the U.S. Commerce Department’s dumping determination, except for one technical point which deals with the Commerce Department’s complex computation practice known as “zeroing.” Zeroing refers to a particular way of comparing prices from sales make in the United States with those made in the foreign market.
   The WTO panel was split on the Commerce Department’s zeroing practice. One panel expert took the unusual step of filing a dissenting opinion stating that the Commerce Department’s zeroing methodology is consistent with the WTO agreement.
   With the U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in January that the Commerce Department’s zeroing practice comports with U.S. law, the industry coalition said it is unlikely that this “minor part” of the WTO panel finding will affect the dumping margin on softwood lumber from Canada.
   “We continue to support compromise settlement terms that would lead to competitive pricing over a phase-in period with interim measures against the unfair trade,” Wood said. “But, unless and until the two countries finalize a settlement, U.S. law requires a full offset of the subsidies and dumping through import duties.”