U.S. duties on Canadian lumber near 35%, B.C. council says

Canadian softwood lumber now faces combined U.S. duties and tariffs of almost 35 per cent after the latest U.S. Department of Commerce review, the BC Lumber Trade Council said Oct. 14, 2026.

That is down from the combined 45 per cent announced in August 2025, but the council said the remaining burden is still significant for mills that ship lumber to the United States, Canada’s largest lumber market.

The council said the total is made up of three layers: countervailing (anti-subsidy) duties of 14.11 per cent, an anti-dumping rate of 10.64 per cent, and a separate 10 per cent tariff that U.S. President Donald Trump imposed on national security grounds. Those add up to 34.75 per cent. The figures were reported by CP24, CTV News and CBC News.

Kim Haakstad, the council’s interim president, said members are disappointed that producers still face what she called unjustified and punitive trade measures. She said the combined duties and tariffs remain a heavy burden, and argued that trade barriers raise home-building costs in the United States and hurt American companies that supply Canadian mills.

Global Wood Markets Info reported that Commerce issued final countervailing duty determinations in the seventh administrative review, which covers shipments made from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2024, and reduced the proposed rates for several major producers. The final results follow revised preliminary calculations released in June. The new rates are expected to take effect after they are published in the U.S. Federal Register.

The Government of Canada’s softwood lumber tracker shows how much the numbers have moved. In the June 30 post-preliminary results, combined duty rates were 31.37 per cent for Canfor, 25.49 per cent for Resolute and 20.92 per cent for West Fraser, with 25.18 per cent for companies not individually reviewed. Those rates did not take effect, the tracker noted, because only final results do. The tracker lists the sixth-review final results of Aug. 8, 2025, at 47.65 per cent for Canfor and 26.47 per cent for West Fraser.

The 10 per cent Section 232 tariff on softwood timber and lumber has been in place since Oct. 14, 2025, according to the same tracker. It is separate from the anti-dumping and countervailing duties and does not change with the review.

The Government of Canada tracker also records that on Oct. 5, 2026, a NAFTA Chapter 19 binational panel affirmed Commerce’s second remand determination in a separate countervailing duty challenge, which it said effectively ends that case.

The Canadian angle is largely about British Columbia, where the council represents the industry, and about housing. Lumber duties are paid by U.S. importers at the border, but producers and Canadian mill communities carry the effects through margins and sales. The review does not measure job losses, and the council did not give a job figure in the reports reviewed.

Canadian tariff policy has stayed in the news this fall. Canada News Media has also explained how the new U.S. tariffs broke through CUSMA’s shield.

What happens next depends on the Federal Register notice. The new rates take effect once Commerce publishes it, and the eighth administrative review, in which Resolute and West Fraser were selected as mandatory respondents, is already under way, according to the Government of Canada tracker.

Via CP24, CTV News, CBC News and Global Wood Markets Info. Rates are as reported by the BC Lumber Trade Council and had not been confirmed in a Commerce notice at the time of writing.

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