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US Housing Starts: March 2019
US new-home construction unexpectedly fell in March, said the US Commerce Department Friday, decelerating to the slowest pace since May 2017 and suggesting builders remain wary even as lower mortgage rates and steady wage gains offer support to consumers. For housing starts, this was the fifth negative Year-over-Year reading in a row (with March’s result…
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Softwood Lumber Prices Continue Dropping, US Housing Data Troubling
The latest data of US new housing starts and of home sales, for March 2019, is not encouraging. At a time of year when wood sales would normally be hot, this housing market softness is doing nothing to improve already dropping North America construction framing softwood lumber prices. Last week, Canadian sawmills and companies were…
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Latest WTO Ruling on Softwood Lumber: Detailed Explanation
The reality is that Canada is “trapped” in an issue between the World Trade Organization and US President Donald Trump’s Administration. Knowledgeable insiders explain that the US is blocking appointments of adjudicators to the global trade resolution agency, seemingly in an effort to put pressure on the WTO to allow “zeroing” (a method of calculation…
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Even as Business Remains Steady, Softwood Lumber Prices Drop Further
Many phone calls and negotiations were made, but actual sales of North America softwood lumber last week were not an improvement over recent weeks. Sales stumbled again last week as both primary and secondary suppliers of Western Spruce-Pine-Fir lumber in the United States had to reduce their asking prices to move even small volumes. For…
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Canada to Appeal Recent Softwood Lumber Ruling at WTO and NAFTA
Just as Canada is being tossed about like a pebble between two great forces with China’s ban on Canadian canola imports — supposedly due to the US extradition request and arrest in Vancouver, BC of a top executive at Hawuei last month — the World Trade Organization (WTO) is mired in a crisis of delayed…
