WASHINGTON, Oct. 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- On Thursday, Minister Joly announced the fast tracking of Prime Minister Carney's recent $1.2 billion dollar subsidy package for Canada's lumber industry aimed at neutralizing U.S. antidumping and countervailing lumber duties. "Targeted industry support like this is exactly the type of unfair subsidy that our longstanding trade laws are designed to address," said Zoltan van Heyningen, Executive Director of the U.S. Lumber Coalition. "I sincerely hope that Canadian taxpayers are paying close attention. The cycle is obvious. Canadian lumber companies receive subsidies from their government, which are then collected by the U.S. government as duties at the border when those companies ship into the U.S. market."
"It would be more efficient and less disruptive if Canada simply sent those funds to the United States directly," added van Heyningen. "Perhaps then Canada would see that smaller government subsidies to Canadian lumber companies can mean lower anti-subsidy duty rates for Canadian lumber companies."
"I am sure that President Trump and his Administration are watching Canada's unrelenting announcements of new multibillion-dollar subsidies for Canada's already heavily subsidized lumber industry. We hope that President Trump will adjust upward his Section 232 lumber tariff measures in response to each new massive subsidy announcement by the Canadian government," continued van Heyningen.
"The simple fact is that it is Canadian softwood lumber companies who are directly paying the duties and tariffs because they own the importers of record. Just look at the financial statements of the Canadian lumber companies, and you will see them listing the duties that each has paid," added van Heyningen.
"It is also a fact that these Canadian lumber companies are unable to pass that cost onto the U.S. consumer during a weak housing cycle. Canada First allies such as the National Association of Homebuilders should stop peddling misleading information regarding President Trump's trade law enforcement measures, and instead devote more attention to building more homes for Americans. That would actually lower housing costs for Americans," said van Heyningnen.
Canada has an enormous softwood lumber excess capacity problem, and Canada's federal and provincial governments provide massive subsidies to help sustain that market-disrupting capacity. Canada engages in egregious and sustained unfair trade practices to unload its massive excess lumber capacity and production into the U.S. market. This fact pattern and Canada's unfair trade practices are extremely harmful to the U.S. lumber industry, U.S. workers, and forestry dependent U.S. communities.
"Canada is in a desperate fight for relevancy in the U.S. market, trying to hold on to its market share at all costs as American-made lumber is replacing unfairly-traded Canadian lumber. When you couple their decision to drop multiple appeals of the U.S. Government's findings that Canada dumped its lumber into the U.S. with the rhetoric from Canadian industry and provincial officials claiming that their 'wood' is better and invoking 'Russia,' it is all sounding very desperate and much more like a guilty plea," concluded van Heyningen.
More information:
In a letter earlier this year, the U.S. lumber industry expressed its strong support for President Trump's unyielding focus on enforcing our trade laws against all foreign unfair trade practices: https://uslumbercoalition.org/story/u-s-lumber-industry-and-workers-letter-to-president-trump/
U.S. lumber community voices on President Trump's trade law enforcement and the positive impacts on U.S. manufacturing: https://vimeo.com/1086817309?fl=pl&fe=ti
Enforcing the U.S. trade laws helps increase the U.S. supply of lumber to build American homes, all without impacting the cost of a new home, as demonstrated by data from the NAHB and Fastmarkets Random Lengths.
About the U.S. Lumber Coalition
The U.S. Lumber Coalition is an alliance of large and small softwood lumber producers from around the country, joined by their employees and woodland owners, working to address Canada's unfair lumber trade practices. Our goal is to serve as the voice of the American lumber community and effectively address Canada's unfair softwood lumber trade practices. The Coalition supports the full enforcement of the U.S. trade laws to allow the U.S. industry to invest and grow to its natural size without being impaired by unfairly traded imports. Continued full enforcement of the U.S. trade laws will strengthen domestic supply lines by maximizing long-term domestic production and lumber availability produced by U.S. workers to build U.S. homes. For more information, please visit the Coalition's website at www.uslumbercoalition.org.
CONTACT: Zoltan van Heyningen
[email protected] | 202-805-9133
SOURCE U.S. Lumber Coalition

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