Resolving Canada-U.S. Trade Disputes in Agriculture and Forestry: Lessons from Lumber

Jeffrey Biggs, Susanna Laaksonen-Craig, Kurt Niquidet and Gerrit van Kooten

No 2005-03, Working Papers from University of Victoria, Department of Economics, Resource Economics and Policy Analysis Research Group

Abstract: Prominent trade disputes between Canada and the U.S. involve agriculture and forestry, with lack of transparency caused by Canadian non-market institutions a source of U.S. objections. Though there has been a recent flurry of activity in the binational dispute resolution panel on Canadian exports of wheat, one of every six panels since 1989 has involved softwood lumber. We examine lessons from the lumber dispute to shed light on U.S. objections to the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB). We argue that U.S. lumber lobbyists will continue to use perceived Canadian institutional obscurity to keep pressure on policymakers, while the CWB system enables similar agricultural interests in to agitate for trade sanctions. Traditional strategies such as dispute resolution boards, appeals to the WTO, and bilateral policy reform can only buy Canada time – new strategies are needed if Canada is to maintain sovereignty over its trade institutions.

JEL-codes: Q17 Q18 Q23 Q27 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2005-06
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://web.uvic.ca/~repa/publications/REPA%20work ... kingPaper2005-03.pdf Final version, 2005 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Resolving Canada-US Trade Disputes in Agriculture and Forestry: Lessons from Lumber (2006)
Working Paper: Resolving Canada-U.S. Trade Disputes in Agriculture and Forestry: Lessons from Lumber (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rep:wpaper:2005-03

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Victoria, Department of Economics, Resource Economics and Policy Analysis Research Group Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by G.C. van Kooten ().