Aftermath of the NAFTA Lumber Wars: More Litigation

Longtime readers may recall my previous obsession with the seemingly endless Lumber Wars between Canada and the U.S. over Canadian timber subsidies and U.S. tariffs punishing such subsidies. The dispute threatened NAFTA, or at least Chapter 19 of NAFTA, because of the U.S. lumber industry’s lawsuit to declare that chapter unconstitutional.

Now it turns out that the deal to end the lumber wars is itself provoking litigation. As Roger noted in a previous post, the deal was itself highly unusual and outside of the NAFTA system. As this article points out, there are big questions about the $1 billion the U.S. government retained in the deal.

Is it an illegal $1 billion slush fund for Bush administration friends in the timber industry, extorted from Canada and designed to evade congressional oversight?

Or is it a fairly negotiated end to an expensive trade war that’s “the best thing that has happened to private forest land conservation in the United States in 100 years?”

It depends on your point of view. Now, a federal lawsuit filed in Seattle is bringing more scrutiny to the controversial deal. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., is spearheading a Senate effort to get more information about who got the money and what they’re doing with it.

Sounds like a neat case. If anyone has a copy of the complaint, I would be happy to post it online here.