The Membership Drive Is On!
This year's membership drive is now underway, and as always, the competition will be intense.
In addition to valuable cash prizes, the winner now also receives the membership plaque, presented at the Annual Meeting. With the highly successful 2019 Annual Meeting now in the books, it is time to work toward 2020.
When you recruit new members, the entire WPA membership is the winner!
New members can join and pay on the website. Here is the link: www.westernpallet.org
A NAFTA panel has given the United States three months to review its tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber imports, according to a report in the National Post.
The panel participants — including three Canadians and two Americans — in a ruling this month, said they couldn’t agree with the U.S. International Trade Commission that there was evidence Canadian imports were causing injury to the U.S. industry. The body asked the commission to reconsider the evidence it used to reach its decision within 90 days.
“This decision supports what Canada has been saying all along: U.S. duties on Canadian softwood lumber are unfair and unwarranted,” said Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland in a statement. “The panel’s decision is an important step in the right direction in having these duties on Canadian exports removed and the sums collected reimbursed.”
The panel noted that the U.S. softwood industry was in the midst of its most profitable period ever, which made it hard to accept the conclusion that Canadian wood was harming it.
In April 2017 the U.S. imposed duties averaging about 20 percent on most Canadian softwood exports. At the time, it alleged that Canada was unfairly subsidizing its industry as well as dumping wood into the U.S. at unfair prices. Subsequently, the American trade-commission determination that Canada’s industry was causing harm to the U.S. producers.
“We’ve fought these battles before and we won,” Susan Yurkovich, president of the B.C. Lumber Trade Council told the National Post, commenting that in the last softwood lumber dispute it took three rulings from the NAFTA panel to convince the commission to back down. “They are the same arguments this time. But it takes a long time.”
NAFTA Panel Says ITC Can't Show Harm
SEPTEMBER 2019