The WTO is fairly useless imho, its processes are lengthy, toothless, lengthy, productive only of mealy-mouthed appeasement of the DC backroom boyz, lengthy, and they grind on forever without really resolving anything
Meantime the damage is being done daily ... Interfor has for some time been going to shut down their old McDonald cedar mill and rebuild it, they've just announced that they'll rebuild it south of the line, to ship as raw as possible a product south to evade the penalties on canadian manufactures .... lots of small mills in the interior have just given up, while the bigger companies are trying to combat the penalties by producing at capacity in an effort to get their unit costs down, which apparently will help fudge the arcane system the US 'Commerce' department uses to calculate future penalties on canadian product ... plus they are trying to retain their customer base - lots of relationships between producer and consumer in peril here
There will continue to be damage done until the US public wakes up to what is happening in their federal capital ... hard to say what it would take to spark such an event, but i'd like to try a canuck government with spine, one that would say ok boyz, no more US goods and services coming north duty-free, plus we are going to add an export tax on oil and gas going south, sufficient to cover your stupid little lumber duty game, and something on top for our expenses and general aggravation |
