U.S. timber industry faces challenge

ST. PAUL -- The sting of the global economy could get worse for the Northland's timber industry if President Bush doesn't renegotiate a lumber trade agreement with Canada by the end of next month, Sens. Paul Wellstone and Mark Dayton warned Friday.

Minnesota Democrats Dayton and Wellstone joined a bipartisan group of senators in a letter urging Bush to renegotiate the 1996 U.S.-Canada Softwood Lumber Agreement, which expires March 31.

The trade agreement sets import quotas and imposes higher tariffs on imports over the quota amount. Those trade barriers will disappear if the agreement expires.

With record imports of Canadian timber, U.S. lumber prices have fallen by one third in the past year. About 100 U.S. lumber mills have closed in the past six months.

In the Northland, more than 1,000 workers have been affected.

The Georgia-Pacific hardboard plant in Duluth laid off 19 employees Monday.

The Louisiana-Pacific paper mill in Two Harbors idled 85 workers from Feb. 1 to Feb. 15.

Partridge River, a hardwood cabinet manufacturer in Superior, laid off 34 workers Feb. 2.

Blount Manufacturing in Prentice, Wis., laid off 69 workers in December and January.

Hedstrom Lumber Co. permanently closed its Two Harbors mill in September, cutting 40 jobs there and eight jobs at its Grand Marais headquarters.

Stora Enso, the owner of Lake Superior Paper Industries and Superior Recycled Fiber Industries in Duluth, is eliminating 700 jobs companywide.

Last summer, Potlatch Corp. cut 126 salaried jobs in northern Minnesota and laid off 60 hourly workers at its Cloquet and Brainerd paper mills.

In addition, 500 Potlatch workers in Cloquet went through an unscheduled weeklong shutdown in December.

"Doing nothing, or extending the current agreement for a short period of time, will only provide advantages for the Canadian industry and destroy our domestic softwood industry,'' the senators wrote. "To open our market unilaterally while allowing Canadian provincial governments to continue subsidizing timber to their mills would not only be unsound trade policy, but devastating to our timber industry, its workers and landowners.''

Most Canadian timber is owned by the government and sold to logging companies at lower-than-market-value prices, effectively subsidizing the industry.

Dayton said he plans to meet with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick to discuss U.S. trade policies on timber, steel and agriculture.

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