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US Economy, Home Building 2020
While Canada has diversified it’s softwood lumber export destinations since the US housing market downturn of 2008 to …. well, in a way still ongoing, the US remains solid customer of 60% of Canada’s softwood lumber production by volume. Macroeconomic conditions in the US have changed drastically in the past decade; not just the Millennial…
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US Home Building 2020
“The main issue is — the price of homes in the US remains too high and the lack of good affordable housing,” said Don Magruder, CEO of RoMac Building Supply, in Daily Commercial online at the end of 2019. For the most part, this account is a good description of the US housing market. Affordable…
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Softwood Lumber and US Housing Market: 2020
The start of a new year, not to mention new decade, always heralds annual wrap-ups and predictions for the coming year. The end of last year did bring some clarity to several economics questions that had proved murky since mid-2018. For their part, construction framing softwood lumber prices ended 2019 generally even compared to the…
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North America Softwood Lumber Production, Sawmill Capacity Utilization, WWPA: Oct 2019
Once again flat, as the previous two months, the latest issue of the Western Wood Products Association’s monthly Lumber Track, for January-October 2019, shows US softwood lumber production volume still basically flat from from the same time last year, to 29,909 mmfbm. Also like last month, January – October softwood lumber production in Canada continued…
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Global Softwood Lumber Trade Complications
The biggest issue by far for Canada’s forest products industry as 2019 comes to a close is: complications to global trade.There are two major unknowns right now; one in each of the political arenas Canada uses to battle the never-ending disputes with the United States over softwood lumber duties. At the World Trade Organization, where…
