Canada Hits Back With 25% Tariffs on US Lumber and 50% on Plywood

Ottawa's revised list of 629 tariff items takes effect on Tuesday after fish and seafood came off, with veneer, OSB, particleboard, and fibreboard left outside the wood lines.

Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne announces Canada's counter-tariff list at a roofing company in Ottawa on 25 August, a day before his department cut it from 874 tariff items to 629. Industry Minister Mélanie Joly, Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu, and Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon joined the announcement. (Photo Credit: The Canadian Press / Alamy Live News)

Importers bringing American softwood lumber into Canada will start paying a 25 per cent surtax on Tuesday, with plywood, LVL, and dissolving pulp subject to a 50 per cent surtax. That is according to Finance Canada, which published the tariff item by item late last month.

“Today, I’m announcing that Canada will match the US tariffs dollar for dollar, rate for rate,” François-Philippe Champagne said, with the Minister of Finance and National Revenue announcing the measures at a roofing company in Ottawa alongside Industry Minister Mélanie Joly, Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu, and Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon.

American pine, fir and spruce, spruce-pine-fir, hem-fir, and other conifers make up the five sawn softwood lines at 25 per cent, while 13 plywood lines carry 50 per cent, LVL among them, and two wood charcoal lines went on at the same rate on 26 August. Veneer, OSB, particleboard, and fibreboard are not on the list, so American strand board crosses on the old terms while the plywood stacked beside it pays 50 per cent at the border.

Toilet paper, tissues, and light kraft pay 25 per cent across four of the 17 paper lines, with cartons, coated papers, envelopes, and stationery at 50 per cent, and dissolving pulp takes one line at the same rate. Wood Central counts 39 lines across chapters 44 to 49 of the revised list, nine at 25 per cent and 30 at 50, before furniture.

Canada took 882 million US dollars of cartons and boxes from the United States in 2025, on UN Comtrade figures, the largest paper heading on the list by trade, with coated and printed paper at 717 million, toilet paper and tissues at 575 million, and coated paper and board at 526 million. Uncoated paper and board at 627 million, corrugated rolls, labels, and writing paper carry no line at all, and the surtax applies to the listed items within a heading rather than to the whole heading.

Canada’s 2025 paper and paperboard imports from the United States by heading, and the counter-tariff rate on the lines Ottawa listed inside each. Grey headings carry no listed line. (Graphic: Wood Central, from UN Comtrade and Finance Canada)

“Yes, those will help us, because they will protect our market, so it’s not a one-way street,” Bhavjit Thandi said, with the Richmond Plywood chief financial officer speaking after the list was published. The Richmond, British Columbia, mill had recalled eight truckloads staged for the United States when the American duty took effect, and Thandi wants Buy Canadian rules for public projects to take precedence, a position Kim Haakstad, chief executive of the Council of Forest Industries, supports.

“Counter-tariffs are retaliation, not a defensive strategy that protects domestic producers from the impacts of tariffs on their export sales,” David Elstone wrote on 27 August, with the Spar Tree Group managing director counting 45 forest product classifications once furniture and kitchen cabinets are added. He estimates the American forest products on the list were worth $3.2 billion in 2025, with $527 million of it entering British Columbia, with paper and packaging accounting for the largest share at $2.4 billion.

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The 50 per cent on American plywood answers the 50 per cent Canadian plywood has paid going south since 22 August. American sawn softwood pays 25 per cent duty upon entry to Canada starting Tuesday, while Canadian softwood entering the United States carries a 10 per cent Section 232 tariff on top of antidumping and countervailing duties that Elstone says average 35.16 per cent.

The Forest Products Association of Canada counted 98 forestry lines inside the July proclamations, and Elstone counts 103. Ottawa had published no schedule of its own when Mark Carney set the 8 September date on 22 August, and the northbound list runs shorter than either southbound count.

Prime Minister Mark Carney set the 8 September date on Parliament Hill on 22 August, with Canada-US Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc behind him, three days before his Finance Minister published the list. (Photo Credit: The Canadian Press / Alamy Live News)

“We appreciate the government’s quick action to address the serious pressures facing Canadian industries and impacted families,” Derek Nighbor said on 25 August, with the association’s president and chief executive still reviewing the details.

Heidi Brock, president and chief executive of the American Forest & Paper Association, answered the same day that the pulp, paper, packaging, and tissue supply chain is “deeply integrated across North America”, and that counter-tariffs “risk adding uncertainty and cost” on both sides of the border. Packaging companies have weighed pulling shipments forward ahead of 8 September, with little firm evidence that any have.

Goods already in transit on 8 September cross at the old rate, Finance Canada’s backgrounder states, and there is no carve-out for CUSMA-compliant goods. Ottawa will consider remission requests for inputs that cannot be sourced in Canada or outside the United States, and a $7.5 billion support package for workers and businesses accompanied the list.

Source: https://woodcentral.com.au/canada-counter-tariffs-us-lumber-plywood/