andyt andyt:
I'm not sure that just a ban on exports is the answer. The reason those logs are going out of the country, is because those buyers are willing to pay substantially more for them than the local mills. I had a friend in the lumber business who said he could sell a log to the US for $500 that MacBlo (at the time) would turn into $250 worth of lumber, ie half the money after all that extra value added. He said they were in the value subtraction business. So our mills need to be a whole lot more competitive. That's where the govt needs to look to see what if anything it can do.
Yeah, but could that be because there are US tarrifs that limit the demand for Canadian-milled lumber and therefore keep the price low? Americans want/need the lumber from Canadian forests, but the current system seems to limit the amount of lumber that can be sent directly to the US market from Canadian mills while US mills are fed a steady supply of Canadian logs.
By that same token, isn't the price of logs in the US market inflated because of their auction system and logging that is heavily concentrated on private-land?
It does 'feel; like we're subsidizing US lumber mills at the expense of Canadian mills. The US mills get to buy the cheapest logs (from Canada) and the sell the most expensive lumber, with less-expensive competition sidelined by tariffs.
I wonder how much of that US-milled lumber from Canadian logs makes its way back to the Canadian market.