{"id":157471,"date":"2023-05-14T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-14T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mediaintel.asia\/?p=918247"},"modified":"2023-05-14T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-05-14T00:00:00","slug":"canadian-plywood-makers-seek-duties-as-cheap-chinese-rivals-carve-out-half-the-market-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/2023\/05\/14\/canadian-plywood-makers-seek-duties-as-cheap-chinese-rivals-carve-out-half-the-market-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian plywood makers seek duties as cheap Chinese rivals carve out half the market"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"MediaIntel.Asia\"<\/a><\/div>\n

It\u2019s been years since Carlos Zarate and others in Canada\u2019s decorative plywood industry started telling the federal government about a growing problem in their business.
\nThe president of the Canadian Hardwood Plywood and Veneer Association warns of an industry in decline, but not due to falling demand for things like kitchen cabinets, decorative wood panels, furniture, and other non-structural wood products.
\nZarate, who\u2019s also president of Industrie Ergie Inc. in Victoriaville, Que., said the association\u2019s members have seen their market share in Canada drop because they are unable to compete with plywood products imported from China at prices domestic producers could never hope to match, let alone beat.
\nThe industry wants duties imposed on Chinese exporters, who they say enjoy unfair advantages such as heavy government subsidies and access to illegally harvested wood, flooding global markets with cheap goods that drastically undercut competitors.
\nBut they\u2019ve been dumbfounded by their inability to convince Canadian authorities to crack down on the Chinese products, which have been subject to hefty duties in the U.S. since 2017.
\nCanadian industry players complained to the Canada Border Services Agency about the situation in April 2020, urging an investigation into dumping and subsidies for their competitors in China.
\n\u201cIn terms of pricing, Canadian producers are consistently undercut by dumped and subsidized Chinese imports. Lost sales and price reductions have caused significant injury to Canadian producers, and over time, some customers have simply stopped asking Canadian producers to compete with Chinese import pricing,\u201d they told the CBSA in a submission.
\n\u201cProducers must increasingly look to other export markets to sell their products. The primary export market is the United States, which is now protected against dumped and subsidized Chinese imports.\u201d
\nBut the agency\u2019s investigation didn\u2019t go the way Zarate had hoped, and the association appealed in Federal Court about the decision of the president of the CBSA to drop the investigation.
\nThe Federal Court of Appeal upheld the decision in April in another blow to the industry in Canada, Zarate said.
\nZarate said the industry has been in contraction, a process that accelerated in the last 15 years when Chinese exporters ramped up their presence in Canada. They now account for more than half the country\u2019s market share.
\nHe said Canadian firms find themselves competing in a \u201cdisrupted market,\u201d where Chinese-made products cost half or even a third of the price of those made in Canada.
\n\u201cEven before the case, we\u2019ve seen many Canadian plywood mills and veneer mills disappear throughout the years because they could not compete against the Chinese imports,\u201d he said.
\nOttawa-based trade lawyer Gordon LaFortune acted for several Chinese companies that came under scrutiny by the Canada Border Services Agency.
\nHe said his clients were able to show that their costs weren\u2019t distorted as the Canadian industry players claimed, meaning there was no \u201cparticular market situation\u201d that justified the imposition of duties on their products.
\n\u201cThe CBSA is not a shrinking violet. If there was a shred of evidence that showed dumping, if there was a shred of evidence they could have relied on to find a particular market situation, (they) would have done it, but they didn\u2019t,\u201d LaFortune said.
\nThe association and its members said in the complaint to the border agency in 2020 that there had been \u201cinjurious dumping and subsidizing\u201d of products by Chinese producers.
\nThe Canadian companies tried to convince the agency that the market in China was distorted by illegally harvested wood and heavy government control and subsidization, hoping duties would be slapped on imported products as a result.
\nThe agency identified hundreds of China-based firms in the market, but few responded to its requests for information during the probe.
\nUltimately, the agency did not find the existence of a \u201cparticular market situation\u201d in the decorative plywood space involving a number of Chinese firms, though it did find some were indeed dumping product and receiving subsidies.
\nAt the same time, the Canadian International Trade Tribunal began an inquiry stemming from the domestic producers\u2019 complaint to the CBSA.
\nIn February 2021, the tribunal determined that dumping and subsidizing decorative plywood products had \u201cnot caused injury and are not threatening to cause injury to the domestic industry.\u201d
\nThe findings of both the CBSA and the tribunal, and more recently the Federal Court of Appeal, have \u201cdumbfounded\u201d those working in Canada\u2019s decorative plywood industry, said Jeff Bromley, chair of the United Steelworkers\u2019 Wood Council.
\nThe union has a few hundred members working in the decorative plywood industry in Ontario, Bromley said, and the United States imposed anti-dumping and countervailing duties on Chinese-made products several years ago.
\n\u201cThe fact that the Americans were successful in establishing countervailing duties on the same product and we were not, we\u2019re a little flabbergasted to be quite honest,\u201d Bromley said.
\nIn 2017, the U.S. International Trade Commission found the Chinese imports were harming American producers and it imposed anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties of more than 180 per cent based on industry complaints similar to those of Canadian firms today.
\nCanadian labour standards and wages are much higher compared to China, Bromley said, and cheaply produced decorative plywood products imported into Canada are \u201charming Canadian jobs.\u201d
\n\u201cWe can\u2019t compete with what they\u2019re doing, how they\u2019re producing the products,\u201d he said.
\nFor the union and its members, Bromley said the issue comes down to protecting well-paying Canadian jobs that produce products according to high standards of sustainability.
\nLaFortune, meanwhile, said he understands why domestic producers claim to be \u201chard done by,\u201d but imposing duties on products imported from China wouldn\u2019t only affect the foreign companies that make them.
\n\u201cWhat about the rest of the Canadian industry? What about the construction workers who are installing hardwood and plywood? What about the companies that are buying it? Distribute it? The manufacturers who use it in furniture? Are we gonna impose additional costs on them?,\u201d LaFortune said. \u201cBecause that\u2019s what will happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

This data comes from MediaIntel.Asia's Media Intelligence and Media Monitoring Platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been years since Carlos Zarate and others in Canada\u2019s decorative plywood industry started telling the federal government about a growing problem in their business.
\nThe president of the Canadian Hardwood Plywood and Veneer Association warns of an …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":253,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[692,144,762,194,484],"tags":[3472,3556,2724,2127,10315],"class_list":["post-157471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canada","category-china","category-corporate-social-responsibility","category-news-chinese-law","category-united-states","tag-chinese","tag-export","tag-exports","tag-import","tag-media-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/253"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":157474,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157471\/revisions\/157474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}