Justin Trudeau’s visit to the Washington helped developing a closer connection in the solving of the ongoing Softwood Lumber Agreement negotiations, as Canada’s global trade minister, Chrystia Freeland, said.
“We have now handled to get the Americans to the table, we have actually handled to raise attention to this concern at the very greatest levels. We have the United States president announcing in the Rose Garden that he believes a deal can and should be done. That’s significant. I don’t want to downplay to any individual the complexity — the fiendish intricacy — of the softwood lumber issue [however] this was a genuine breakthrough,” Freeland added.
After the meeting, US President Barack Obama and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Freeland and Michael Froman, her America equivalent, to consider all of the options of handling the trade conflict issues and fill a report within 100 days from last Thursday, according to Canadian Tribune.
The first SLA was signed in 2006 and renewed in 2012. Before the agreement was reached, as to prevent the US from imposing trade tariffs for Canada, there have been nearly 10,000 task losses for the Canadian Market. Thus, $ 4.5 billion in tariffs have gone to Canadian exporters finally.
The US lumber producers say that Canada has an unfair advantage because they have access to lands, where the stumpage fees are very low. Yet, Obama said that this “enduring, bipartisan irritant” will reach an end as some solution will be found. Also Trudeau said that he was confident that a resolution will came within the next months.
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