[PEN-L:33672] wto and softwood lumber redux

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

WTO panel to examine softwood duties
By ROMA LUCIW
Globe and Mail Update
Wednesday, January 8 - Online Edition, Posted at 6:03 PM EST


The World Trade Organization has agreed to establish a fourth panel,
this time to hear Ottawa's challenge of U.S. dumping duties on Canadian
exports of softwood lumber.

The U.S. imposed an average 8.43 per cent dumping duty on all Canadian
softwood lumber exports last May, in addition to an 18.7 per cent
countervailing duty.

The formation of the latest WTO panel is a the lastest chapter in the
long-running trade war between the two countries, bringing the total
number of legal challenges Canada has launched to seven.

"We are confident this panel will find that the U.S. dumping
determination is flawed," Canada's International Trade Minister Pierre
Pettigrew said in a release late Wednesday.

"Canada has always favoured a long-term negotiated resolution to the
Canada-U.S. softwood lumber dispute, but only on a fair and reasonable
basis. We will continue to pursue a negotiated solution along with our
legal challenges."

The Canadian government said it is challenging the U.S. dumping
determination based on its inconsistencies with the Anti-dumping
Agreement, the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and U.S.
obligations under these pacts.

On Nov. 1, the WTO found that the United States erred in the way it
calculated preliminary countervailing duties on Canadian lumber.

Canadian exporters of softwood timber are now paying Washington taxes
averaging 27 per cent, when anti-dumping and countervailing levies are
combined, on $10-billion in annual lumber shipments to the United
States.

Washington this week proposed a quick solution to the logjam, one which
would have the provinces adopt market-based timber-pricing practices in
place south of the border.

Under the proposal, provinces would have to put most of their timber up
for auction, end minimum cutting requirements that keep many sawmills
running and remove the ban on the export of raw logs to the U.S. market.

But Canadian opposition parties denounced the U.S. roadmap.

"This document provides no basis for a settlement and goes to the very
core of why we are in a dispute. Basically, the U.S. Department of
Commerce is projecting a wish list of what the U.S. lumber lobby wants,"
said John Duncan, the Canadian Alliance critic for international trade.

"This paper is simply a protectionist document that is out of step with
NAFTA, out of step with free trade and does not instil the confidence
needed for the basis of a resolution."