Suchergebnisse

The housing industry has long provided important markets for the higher-value hardwood lumber used in fixtures such as cabinets, flooring, and millwork. These markets have become even more important in the face of the decline in furniture manufacture in the USA. The importance of housing and other construction markets to the US hardwood industry is the focus of the current review. The housing crisis that began in 2007 (from a construction data perspective) has had a profound impact on the hardwood industry by reducing demand for many products and hardwood industry employment, metrics that recently have started to recover. For higher-value hardwoods, exports have become a critical market in the face of historically low US housing starts. Industrial markets such as pallets and railway ties, traditionally markets for lower-value products, also have increased in relative importance in recent years. While housing starts are expected to eventually return to the long-term trend, an analysis of the current marketplace illustrates the importance of the construction markets to the hardwood industry. Potential new markets for emerging products that can make use of hardwoods also are derived from construction-based sectors, so the overall importance of housing and building construction to the hardwood industry is not likely to wane for the foreseeable future. ; Public domain authored by a U.S. government employee

THE U.S. TRADE IMBALANCE AND AMERICAN "COMPETITIVENESS" ARE NOW AT THE FOREFRONT OF THE POLITICAL AGENDA IN THE UNITED STATES. THE RECENT DISPUTE OVER CANADIAN LUMBER IMPORTS EXEMPLIFIES THE POLITICS AND CONSEQUENCES OF A PROTECTIONIST POLICY RESPONSE TO THE UNITED STATES' TRADE SITUATION.

Japan imports rather than exports forestry products even though it has ample forestry resources. Moreover, the leading exporters of forest products often have strong market power in the trade market of forestry products. The possibility of incomplete competition in the Japanese wood import market can also be suspected from the fact that the structure of imports of logs and lumber has remained unchanged over the past 10 years. However, there has been limited empirical economic analysis of the timber trade market to support this assertion. In this study, we examine the market power of the primary exporting countries in the Japanese log and lumber market based on the residual demand model. We analysed the import data of forestry products from 1988 to 2010 with respect to every main item exported to Japan. The analysis shows that Canada has market power over several items of logs in the Japanese import market, while the United States and Canada have market power over several items of lumber. The study also clarifies that imperfect competition exists in the Japanese timber import market and that the timber price in Japan is partially determined by the exporting countries. JEL Classification: Q17, Q23, Q27