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U.S. moves to double Canadian lumber tariffs

woodworkingnetwork.com

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Re: U.S. moves to double Canadian lumber tariffs

#81

Post by kokanator »

lhorie wrote: post #75
kokanator wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're not sending it overseas to increase domestic timber prices; This is EXACTLY what they did. You missed the point. They exported at a loss to drive up domestic prices.

Not that I'm doubting you, I'm just trying to understand this claim. Can you explain the motivation behind exporting at a loss? If the argument is that there's too much timber supply driving down prices to the point that some of the inventory is sold at a loss, wouldn't it make more sense to just cut less trees?

Say the market price of a tree had dropped to $1 from $5. If you can export a tree for -$1 and create a domestic shortage which causes a tree domestically to be worth +$4. You effectively double the value of a tree. ( hope the math is right just trying to make an example )

I am not sure why they didn't just cut less trees other than they probably had bids that would expire ( another policy problem ).

Re: U.S. moves to double Canadian lumber tariffs

#82

Post by imtringued »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #68
nightowl_games wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont think the historical arguments about Globalization hold up in a post-covid world. We are seeing a massive CPU and GPU shortage. TSMC is a nexus of world trade. We saw a massive Suez canal blockage. The merits of locally produced goods are far more apparent now than ever before. We are in a new age.

Given the estimated gains of globalization just in economic terms (to say nothing of worldwide economic stability in most situations), which are in the 14-figure range, there's significant doubt here. Yes, there's likely room for things to be made in more than one place in many instances. But global comparative advantage is still the single greatest contributor to rises in global standards of living. Billions of peop…

One problem with globalization is that it takes forever to pull everyone up to the global middle class (around $10k per capita). That's not just bad for low skilled workers in the US. A lot of countries get stuck in the middle income trap because foreign investors move on to the next cheapest country.

Re: U.S. moves to double Canadian lumber tariffs

#83

Post by kenned3 »

RoadieRoller wrote: post #8

(I am not a US citizen, but visited many times) Why not build houses using concrete/cement? Poor Asian countries have been building houses for decades using concrete and less maintenance. No, it is not about weather. Concrete can be easily used in Southern US states where winter is less than a month or no snow at all. At least the structure can be concrete and the walls be wood or drywall. I think it is the wood mafi…

My ex-wife is Chinese from a city in China where everything is made out of cement.

The reason? The region also lacks trees. They have an abundance of the raw materials for cement, but not wood.. So that is what they used.

Cement is also a terrible material for many climates. Here (ontario) the freeze/thaw cycle causes it to crack unless you use a lot of costly methods to prevent this.

Re: U.S. moves to double Canadian lumber tariffs

#84

Post by ericmay »

bobthepanda wrote: post #78
ericmay wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t even need to build those at all… let alone with wood.

We don’t need to do much of anything, but tall buildings are fine, given that they minimize the land impact of a given amount of square footage, and denser communities have lower land footprint and lower per capita carbon emissions. (European cities are plenty dense at moderate heights, but they also offer much smaller living quarters than American ones; a Parisian studio is in the range of 9-35 m^2 whereas an averag…

Skyscrapers specifically (tall buildings depends on definition of height), but they’re very energy intensive. You can only operate, construct, and maintain them with cheap oil.

The problem isn’t density (most European towns are perfect here actually) but too much density. Manhattan is the opposite spectrum of suburbia, and neither are very desirable. France actually does this well in Paris, as you mentioned. The American thing to do would be tear down every arrondissement and replace with skyscrapers. Paris sort of made that mistake with part of the city before they stopped.

I have to imagine that it's not that skyscrapers are great for emissions, but that the suburbs are just abysmal and so everything looks good in comparison.

Walkable neighborhoods and bike-friendly development in mixed-use medium density areas is probably the best. The main issue with suburbs is that you have to drive everywhere, not necessarily the density.

Re: U.S. moves to double Canadian lumber tariffs

#85

Post by [deleted] »

gruez wrote: post #79
kokanator wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't make any argument against exports. Obviously international trade is generally good. The arguments is exporting our own resources in order to drive up the price of those resource domestically. Remember, they didn't make a profit exporting the timber, they exported it at a loss. With the sole purpose of driving up domestic prices.

>Remember, they didn't make a profit exporting the timber, they exported it at a loss. With the sole purpose of driving up domestic prices. What's the evidence that is their intent (ie. they're selling at a lost as part of some sort of diabolical scheme to increase prices), or they're just strapped for cash and selling to whoever is willing to buy them?

[deleted]

Re: U.S. moves to double Canadian lumber tariffs

#86

Post by bobthepanda »

ericmay wrote: post #84
bobthepanda wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t need to do much of anything, but tall buildings are fine, given that they minimize the land impact of a given amount of square footage, and denser communities have lower land footprint and lower per capita carbon emissions. (European cities are plenty dense at moderate heights, but they also offer much smaller living quarters than American ones; a Parisian studio is in the range of 9-35 m^2 whereas an averag…

Skyscrapers specifically (tall buildings depends on definition of height), but they’re very energy intensive. You can only operate, construct, and maintain them with cheap oil. The problem isn’t density (most European towns are perfect here actually) but too much density. Manhattan is the opposite spectrum of suburbia, and neither are very desirable. France actually does this well in Paris, as you mentioned. The Amer…

Operating them is not that expensive. A building's heating and cooling needs are proportional to surface area, not volume, and in a given apartment building the vast majority of walls are shared with other units instead of outside. So a taller building is more and more efficient with regards to climate control, unless it doesn't contain a whole lot of volume. The Burj Khalifa is obviously not ideal but at least judging by, say, Hong Kong the optimal sweet spot for a building is 30-40 stories, where you're not running into massive extremes of either cost or carbon emission.

The reason the suburbs perform so poorly is, among other things, transport very quickly becomes the largest contributor to emissions. Hong Kong is so dense that not only is the "fifteen minute city" more than a reality for non-work trips, but most people are within a 15 minute walk or bus ride of massive shopping malls with department stores.

That being said, the end picture looks fuzzy after some more searching, mostly because it's hard to isolate variables about cities (their wealth, their climate, etc.) and also because the definition of what a "city" is varies globally. Other than "very car oriented suburbs with large lots and home sizes are big carbon emitters per capita."

Re: U.S. moves to double Canadian lumber tariffs

#87

Post by saltcured »

mywittyname wrote: post #33
RoadieRoller wrote: post #8

(I am not a US citizen, but visited many times) Why not build houses using concrete/cement? Poor Asian countries have been building houses for decades using concrete and less maintenance. No, it is not about weather. Concrete can be easily used in Southern US states where winter is less than a month or no snow at all. At least the structure can be concrete and the walls be wood or drywall. I think it is the wood mafi…

Costs. The type of lumber used to frame American houses is (well, used to be) quite cheap. Concrete is like $10 per cubic foot. While, a timber framed wall is mostly air. An 18x8 foot wall made of timber would take about 16 boards to make and take an experienced team less than 20 minutes to put up. That's $100 or so in material costs at current (extremely high) prices, plus maybe $100 in labor (this is pretty hard to…

Another type of concrete construction in parts of Asia uses prefabricated, reinforced concrete members. Piers, beams, and panels with internal steel made in a controlled factory setting and having high strength. It's a bit like half-timber construction but replacing the thick timber with concrete. They also use similar concrete for telephone or neighborhood power poles.

They are brought on site and erected by cranes and pile drivers to build the frame of a house somewhat like with large timber. The panels are set across beams to fill in floor areas, and walls are closed with non-load bearing elements, whether brick, blocks, stucco, drywall, etc. I am not sure how well this method works for seismically active areas though, where you would need to tie those in-fill wall areas into the structure.

Re: U.S. moves to double Canadian lumber tariffs

#88

Post by dotcommand »

RoadieRoller wrote: post #8

(I am not a US citizen, but visited many times) Why not build houses using concrete/cement? Poor Asian countries have been building houses for decades using concrete and less maintenance. No, it is not about weather. Concrete can be easily used in Southern US states where winter is less than a month or no snow at all. At least the structure can be concrete and the walls be wood or drywall. I think it is the wood mafi…

> I think it is the wood mafia trying to make a living out of enforcing city codes to use only lumber for houses.

Not really. No more than the ice mafia made the inuit build igloos out of ice. People do with what they have. The eastern seaboard is chock full of trees. When the settlers arrived, they used what was readily available. It's far easier for settlers to make homes out of wood than stone/rocks/etc and concrete didn't exist back in the 1600s/1700s. And as the borders of the country expanded westward, the style of homes made its way west as well.

Re: U.S. moves to double Canadian lumber tariffs

#89

Post by [deleted] »

rhodozelia wrote: post #76
vkou wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which in practice just means that the land didn't get a chance to appreciate by 20-30k. Houses cost every spare penny that we can save up to pay for them. Whether the pennies end up going into raw materials, or speculators doesn't really matter to the end purchaser. If labour and materials became free tomorrow, the cost of housing would remain unchanged, but the cost of land would rise to pick up the slack.

Thank you for a very insightful comment. Houses are worth what people will pay for them, and when you can borrow money so cheaply they are worth a lot! What else are you going to buy? Having a nice place where you spend a lot of time that is near things you do be it work or recreation is worth as much as you can afford to pay - a house in a good location saves precious minutes of your life!

[deleted]

Re: U.S. moves to double Canadian lumber tariffs

#90

Post by Beached »

jypepin wrote: post #49

Very surprised to see some arguments in the article saying lumber only make 4% of construction prices. I'd love to know what type of construction they're looking at. We're currently in the process of building a house and current lumber prices (because of covid mainly) are definitely impacting costs, to the point that it's one of the first thing that both our architect, and then builders mentioned. Everybody involved…

in a traditional 2x4 construction stick built home, the amount of cost wood has is very low, iiiiifffff you exclude premium wood products like hardwood flooring, cabinets, trim, etc. I believe the 4% estimate is fairly accurate for traditional rough in.
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