Trump Swaps Canadian Hardwood Plywood for Thin MDF on 50% Tariffs
Wooden coffins and ice-cream sticks are among nine wood product lines facing the duty from Friday, in the second rewrite of the Canada tariff list since July.
US President Donald Trump signing proclamations in the Oval Office in September last year. On Friday he signed a proclamation taking seven hardwood plywood lines off the 50 per cent Section 338 list and putting nine wood product lines on it. (Photo Credit: Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)
American importers of Canadian birch, walnut, and other hardwood plywood will no longer pay a 50 per cent tariff, with seven plywood lines among the 22 coming off the list. That is according to the White House, which said on Friday that US President Donald Trump had put MDF no thicker than 5 mm and engineered flooring in their place.
“The modified Section 338 tariffs will continue to safeguard American workers from Canada’s discriminatory or unreasonable and unequal practices,” the White House said in a fact sheet released alongside the proclamation. The changes take effect this Friday, four days before Americans vote in the midterm elections.
Hardwood-faced plywood of any overall thickness comes off, with the seven lines covering panels built solely from plies no thicker than 6 mm each. The World Customs Organization sets that 6 mm limit on each ply rather than on the panel, with clear-finished and opaque-coated panels both coming off the list.
High-density fibreboard goes on alongside the thin MDF, whilst the flooring line covers engineered panels with a face ply no thicker than 6 mm. The rest range from wooden packing boxes and bamboo joinery to wooden coffins and ice-cream sticks, along with softwood continuously shaped along its ends.
A forklift operator moves stock through the lumber aisle of a Home Depot store in Los Angeles. Canadian softwood lumber escaped the 50 per cent Section 338 tariff in July, but still faces separate US duties and the Section 232 tariff. (Photo Credit: ID 327402489 © Elliott Cowand Jr | Dreamstime.com)
Timber and lumber escaped the levy when Trump first invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act in July, marking the first use of the provision in its 96-year history. Derek Nighbor, chief executive of the Forest Products Association of Canada, said the 98 forestry tariff lines on that first list were “a direct assault on our sector and on our workers here in Canada”.
“Canada stands ready to work constructively and in good faith toward a more mutually beneficial trading relationship that respects Canada’s interests,” said Dominic LeBlanc, Canada’s minister responsible for trade with the US, on Friday. Canada answered Trump’s first list with counter-tariffs of its own in September, and LeBlanc said Ottawa was assessing the latest changes.
By contrast, hardwood plywood from China, Indonesia, and Vietnam faces US dumping and subsidy duties of its own, with final rates set in July. Canadian softwood remains subject to separate duties, with a combined rate of 24.75 per cent applying to most Canadian producers since last week.
Canadian paper and packaging exporters get relief on corrugated cartons, moulded pulp, and some paper sacks, whilst unbleached kraft and self-adhesive paper are added to the list. The White House also says the Section 338 tariffs apply on top of any Section 232 tariff, and regardless of whether goods originate under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins, whose family has run a lumber business in Caribou since 1844, announced exemptions for nine categories of Canadian products on Friday. (Photo Credit: United States Senate)
“I have asked for tariff relief for these important products,” said Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins, who announced exemptions on Friday for nine categories of products, from corrugated cartons to seaweed. Collins, whose family has run a lumber business in Caribou, in northern Maine, since 1844, had warned in September that tariffs “including those on forest products” remained in effect.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the exemptions were intended to help Collins in her race against Democrat Troy Jackson, a logger and former president of the Maine Senate. Meanwhile, Misha Linnehan, a spokesperson for the Maine Democratic Party, said Trump was “playing politics with our trade policy when Maine businesses and families are already reeling from the chaos of his trade wars”.
As it stands, the race is widely considered a toss-up, with control of the US Senate on the line. The White House says Section 338 lets Trump change or scrap the list again whenever he decides the public interest calls for it.
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