Understandably, there are a lot of jitters around the Trump administration’s intentions to renegotiate NAFTA and to include softwood lumber trade with Canada. Now the focus is on April 24, 2017. That’s the “Latest date for DOC [U.S. Department of Commerce] to issue Preliminary Determination on subsidy”.
The word is that “no one knows what the preliminary duty will be on April 24th. However, we do know that it will be big enough to hurt and to be a motivator to settle” (B.C. Forest Sector CEO cited on treefrogcreative.ca, April 7, 2017).
In the past the Maritime provinces have been excluded from U.S. duties on softwood lumber affecting other provinces because of our more limited area of Crown land, but N.B. at least is a target on this round.
See
– Countervailing duty investigation of certain softwood lumber products from Canada timelines (B.C. gov)
– Factsheet on Canada-U.S. Softwood Lumber Trade (B.C. gov)
– Softwood lumber woes (Post on this website)