34.75% at the Border: Canada's Lumber Duty Cut Comes With a 2024 Bill

One year to the day after a 10% national-security tariff on Canadian softwood lumber took effect, the U.S. Commerce Department cut the duties stacked beneath it. On Wednesday, Oct. 14, the anti-dumping and countervailing duties on most Canadian exporters came to a combined 24.75%, and with the 10% tariff on top, Canadian lumber will pay 34.75% to cross the border once the rates are published in the Federal Register.

The final results of Commerce's seventh annual review of Canadian softwood lumber, issued Oct. 14, 2026, lower the total U.S. import tax on most Canadian lumber to 34.75% from 45.16%. Because the review covers lumber imported in 2024, when most shipments were deposited at 8.05% or 14.40%, the same 24.75% duty rate that lightens future shipments also means importers of lumber from the companies covered by the review owe more on their 2024 shipments.

The cut is real money for mills. The backward bill is real too. And the effect on an American house is far smaller than either side's rhetoric suggests.

The stack, line by line

Two layers come from the trade cases: an anti-dumping duty on lumber Commerce finds was sold too cheaply, and a countervailing duty to offset what it finds are subsidies. The third is the 10% Section 232 tariff President Donald Trump imposed on national-security grounds, in force since 12:01 a.m. EST on Oct. 14, 2025.

Nearly all of the 10.41-point drop came from anti-dumping, which roughly halved; the subsidy duty barely moved. On $1,000 of lumber (at customs value), import taxes fall by $104.10, a border tax about 23% smaller than Tuesday's.

These are the "all others" rates for most exporters; Resolute and West Fraser, examined individually in both reviews, get company-specific rates, as does Canfor on the anti-dumping side; those rates were not in the announcements. The final came in slightly below the April 9 preliminary of 24.83% reported by Global Affairs Canada; the BC Lumber Trade Council's breakdown lays out the final rates.

The Section 232 layer is a separate instrument, so the review cannot touch it. Global Affairs Canada says it "will be applied in addition to the anti-dumping and countervailing duties already in place." Other tariffs mostly skip lumber: the 10% Section 301 tariff that replaced the global Section 122 tariff in July skips the same forest products, and the 50% Section 338 tariffs on Canada exclude Section 232 goods.

Lumber from Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island certified by the Atlantic Lumber Board is excluded from the duties; the Section 232 tariff's scope is set separately, by tariff code.

Nothing changes at the border until the decision appears in the Federal Register. Last year, the anti-dumping final was announced July 25, 2025, and took effect July 29, four days later. No notice for this final had appeared as of Thursday morning.

A lower rate that sends a bill backward

An annual review does two jobs. In the words of Global Affairs Canada's explainer on the reviews, it "will establish final duty assessment rates for shipments entered during the period of review and establish new estimated duty deposit rates going forward."

This look-back covers calendar 2024, when importers posted cash deposits at 8.05% for most of the year. After the fifth review's final in August 2024, the deposit rose to 14.54%, amended on Sept. 24, 2024, to 14.40%.

Against the final 24.75%, early-2024 shipments were under-deposited by 16.70 points, or $167.00 on every $1,000 of lumber. Later shipments fell short by 10.21 to 10.35 points, or about $102 to $103.50 per $1,000. Interest comes on top.

The U.S. Lumber Coalition put a total on it in April, estimating that "when accounting for interest, Canada is slated to owe an additional $175 million dollars and counting" for imports through 2024. The figure was cumulative across all reviews and came before the final rates, from an interested party.

The review of 2023 shipments, announced in summer 2025, more than doubled the all-others rate, from 14.40% to 35.16%. This one takes back about 10 points of that jump and still leaves the rate far above 2020 through 2022.

Zoltan van Heyningen, executive director of the U.S. Lumber Coalition, read vindication, not retreat: After absolutely egregious behavior in 2023, Canadian sawmills spent 2024 continuing to dump their subsidized lumber into the US at elevated rates.

The pace is its own cost: the final came 652 days after the end of the year it covers. The eighth review, covering 2025 shipments, is already underway, with Resolute and West Fraser as mandatory respondents.

What a new house actually feels

A typical new single-family home uses roughly 15,000 board feet of framing lumber, plus more than 2,200 square feet of softwood plywood and more than 6,800 square feet of OSB, NAHB says, citing Home Innovation Research Labs. At the Oct. 9 Madison's price of $500.36 per 1,000 board feet, reported in NAHB's framing lumber tracker, that framing package costs about $7,505.

Now assume every board is Canadian and the whole cut flows straight to the builder. Strip the old 45.16% stack out of $500.36 and you get about $344.70; put 34.75% back on and you get about $464.48. That is $35.88 less per 1,000 board feet, or about $538 a house.

That is a ceiling. Canada's share of U.S. demand is disputed: the coalition puts it around 19%, Wood Central at about 25%. Scaled to those shares, the saving is roughly $100 to $135 a house.

For scale, NAHB estimated in April 2025 that tariffs in general, not lumber duties alone, would add $10,900 to the cost of building a home. NAHB also notes that when lumber gets cheaper, it "may take at least a few weeks to a couple of months for builders to see price relief."

Lumber got cheaper at the stack's peak. Framing lumber on Oct. 9 was down 4.3% from a year earlier, and futures were down 13.7%. On Wednesday, a contract tracking benchmark lumber futures fell to $533 per 1,000 board feet, down 14.92% from a year earlier, according to Trading Economics.

Hilco Global saw the same thing after duties jumped in 2025: prices "actually fell, reflecting both extreme weakness in housing demand and complex cost absorption across the supply chain." Analyst Russ Taylor told Canadian Mortgage Professional in May: [That] doesn't always mean that because you've got high duties, you can be able to pass it on to the market. Only in strong periods of demand can you do that.

Weak demand, not duties, has been setting the price of a two-by-four, which fits the record on how much tariffs have actually passed into U.S. prices. NAHB still argues the cost is real, calling the lumber tariffs "a tax on American builders, home buyers and consumers" and pressing for a new softwood agreement, part of a wider fight over housing supply.

Mills, deposits and an account nobody agrees exists

If buyers barely feel the duties, Canadian mills do. Fastmarkets says Canadian production fell 8% overall and 13% in British Columbia between mid-2025 and early 2026, while exports to the U.S. fell 20-25% from trend. Taylor counts roughly 8 billion board feet of North American sawmill capacity shed over three years, mostly in Canada, while the U.S. South added about 3 billion.

B.C. has lost "thousands of jobs" in recent years as duties combined with a beetle infestation and wildfires, the Canadian Press reported.

"For nearly a decade, this dispute has put jobs, mills and forestry communities across B.C. under pressure. American families are paying the price too, as these trade barriers drive up the cost of building homes and hurt U.S. companies that sell equipment and services to Canadian sawmills."

Kim Haakstad, interim president, BC Lumber Trade Council

The U.S. industry says the pain is working. Steve Swanson, chair of the coalition and CEO of Swanson Group, said in the U.S. Lumber Coalition's response that "Our industry has shown that it will respond to strong trade policies by investing and creating thousands of jobs, even as lumber demand and housing starts have remained low." Canada's market share, he said, "has been pushed down to levels not seen since the 1970s."

Yet the U.S. still "relies on imports for over a quarter of its consumption," Fastmarkets says, and roughly 10.49 billion board feet came from Canada in 2025. The BC Lumber Trade Council says the U.S. "cannot meet its own demand for spruce-pine-fir (SPF) lumber," and that SPF and Southern Yellow Pine "are not interchangeable," a point Hilco Global, citing the Global Wood Trade Network, says dealers and builders make: Canadian SPF is difficult to substitute.

Ontario ministers Kevin Holland, Mike Harris and Vic Fedeli allowed that the cut "may suggest some relief to softwood lumber producers" while calling the duties "unwarranted." Global Affairs Canada's page had not yet posted the final rates as of Thursday morning; its latest entry was an Oct. 5 NAFTA panel ruling for Commerce on the original subsidy case, which Ottawa said "effectively concludes this challenge."

No new agreement has been reached. The current round began with a U.S. industry petition on Nov. 25, 2016, 3,610 days before Wednesday's ruling. "After nearly a decade, it is obvious the current dispute mechanisms are not working," Brian Menzies of the Independent Wood Processors Association said in April. Haakstad's own verdict on Wednesday was shorter: "It's time to end this dispute." Lumber is one front in a wider fight that has also produced Canada's retaliation lists.

Which leaves the money. In April, B.C. Premier David Eby said: There's $8 billion in a tariff bank account that is jointly held between Canada and the United States that could go to grow the sector.

Van Heyningen answered within weeks: There is obviously no 'joint tariff bank account.' There is only the Treasury Department of the United States that will liquidate these funds into the general coffers of the United States.

Until the reviews and challenges run their course, the deposits stay in U.S. hands, and the coalition expects them to end up in the Treasury.