U.S. Lumber Coalition Pulls No Punches With New Year Statement

Softwood lumber prices remain at historically low levels.  Prices today are 54% lower than their 1975 average and 49% lower than their 1995 average, adjusted for inflation, yet Canada and the National Assn. of Home Builders (NAHB) spared no efforts in 2025 to spread misinformation about the impact of President Trump’s U.S. trade law enforcement on lumber prices and the cost of lumber in new construction, according to a beginning-of-the-year statement from the U.S. Lumber Coalition.

The Coalition states that the Canadian government and NAHB throughout 2025 claimed that increased tariffs and duties on Canadian lumber imports responding to unfair trade practices increased costs for U.S. consumers and contributed to the housing affordability crisis in the U.S. Canada claimed it would walk away from the U.S. market and instead export lumber to other markets. And they claimed that the U.S. lumber industry does not have enough capacity to replace Canadian lumber.

According to the Coalition, the reality is:

—The Canadian lumber industry maintains a massive level of excess production capacity and ships 60 to 70% of its total production into the U.S., flooding the U.S. market and suppressing lumber prices below normal market rates as it desperately seeks to hold onto an artificially high U.S. market share.

—Current antidumping and countervailing duties reflect the fact that Canadian lumber companies shipped large quantities of softwood lumber to the U.S. even as U.S. demand for softwood lumber was weakening. The unrelenting supply of Canadian lumber in the face of that declining demand further drove down prices, leading to large losses at both U.S. and Canadian firms. Had Canadian firms responded to market realities responsibly, their current antidumping and countervailing duty margins would be much lower.   

—The increase in U.S. home prices is unrelated to the price of softwood lumber. Lumber accounts for a very small share of the sales price of a newly constructed home (typically 1-2%) and, regardless, lumber prices are currently low by historical standards and have not kept pace with inflation.  

—Canadian politicians are going to great lengths to tout Canada’s potential to increase exports of softwood lumber to other markets, particularly in Asia. They have also attempted to showcase efforts to build more Canadian housing domestically. But the fact is that weak demand for Canadian lumber in international markets and in Canada has led to increased reliance on the U.S. market, and increasing unused capacity that is uniquely destabilizing for the U.S. lumber market.

U.S. lumber production capacity has increased by more than 8 billion BF since 2016 when the current antidumping and countervailing duty cases began, with U.S. producers supplying more than 36 billion additional board feet of American-made lumber to build American homes.

“The true aim of the U.S. trade remedy measures and the Section 232 tariff is to enable the U.S. lumber industry to grow to its potential without market-disrupting surges of imported lumber,” states Zoltan van Heyningen, Executive Director of the U.S. Lumber Coalition. “Eight years of enforcing AD and CVD laws have already demonstrated that U.S. producers are prepared to capitalize on that opportunity.

“U.S. annual softwood lumber capacity increased by approximately 8 billion board feet from 2015 to July 2025. The Section 232 tariffs implemented by President Trump also have the potential to accelerate U.S. capacity expansions by creating additional pressure on Canada to reduce its excess capacity. Another decade of growth at this rate would enable the U.S. industry to achieve a capacity level sufficient to meet U.S. consumption needs in a typical year. The time has come for Canada to right-size its lumber industry consistent with market realities.” 

The lengthy statement from the Coalition followed a report in December from the Coalition addressing Canada’s massive excess lumber capacity sustained by billions of dollars of government subsidies, and the impact, as an example, on the state of Maine and the nearby Canadian region, resulting in Canadian border mills operating at two shifts while forcing U.S. mills in Maine to operate at one shift.

“For decades Maine softwood sawmills have been forced to reduce capacity and run their mills on single shifts due to subsidized and unfairly dumped Canadian lumber imports. To add insult to injury, many of these Quebec mills exist within one mile of the Maine border. They suck sawlogs from our state, convert it to lumber in Quebec, and dump it back into Maine and New England,” states Jason Brochu, Co-President of Pleasant River Lumber Co.

“Maine mills are in the process of ramping up production to offset these dumped and unfairly traded Canadian imports, thanks to President Trump’s focus on enforcing our trade laws as well as his additional tariff measure to grow U.S. lumber production. Maine lumber mills are modern and efficient and Maine forestry workers are ready for the challenge. Shifts can immediately be added to produce an additional 200+ million board feet of lumber in Maine from Maine logs.”