All right! Party time!
Canada and its lumber industry have won an important victory against punitive American duties in the U.S. Court of International Trade.
In a ruling issued Friday, the U.S. trade court upheld a Canadian claim that the U.S. Commerce Department illegally continued to charge anti-dumping and countervailing duties on lumber after a North American Free Trade Agreement ruling determined there was no basis for them.
Yeah! Fuckin 'A! I'm cranked! You're cranked! We're all cranked! Um ... well, OK, maybe not all of us (emphasis added):
Federal International Trade Minister David Emerson was unavailable for comment but his communications director said the ruling changes nothing.
"The fact is this decision can be and most likely will be appealed rather quickly to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the federal circuit," Robert Klager said from Ottawa. "The final outcome of that probably wouldn't be learned until mid-2007."
Ya know, I was kind of hoping for a little more enthusiasm from the home team. With friends like these ...
4 comments:
I guess we've learned better than to trust the Americans to listen to the courts. I don't know if Canada can ever truly win this battle but then again I'm cynical.
P.S. thanks for posting the Emily of the State video again.. I just started a blog on blogger - to replace my msn space. So come by and hopefully blogroll me, it's going be rough starting over again. But seriously msn spaces are ridiculous. Maybe we can do some joint blogging cynicism.
Dear Dan:
And your new blog would be where exactly?
CC
http://thelastrealist.blogspot.com/
The American are quite right in their position on softwood lumber,
the cost of rape and pillage, move
on to the next wood for same, is far higher than a sustainable long
term forestry. The Canadian system
does present unfair competition on
those terms.Since Canada has such
imense natural resources, the best
thing the government can do to even out the playing field is to impose export taxes equivalent to the import duties. For the sake of
fairness and to avoid future disputes, this level of duties should be imposed on all natural
resources such as oil, gas and hydro. Dispute solved in ten seconds flat.
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