Seems like this might be a way to reduce reliance on Canadian timber. Canada exports 45 billion CAD (USD ~30 billion) yearly, mostly to the USA. Substituting American timber could move some of that economic activity south of the border, reducing Canada's GDP by up to 1% and moving several hundred thousand jobs.
Is there a good reason we want to do this though? It doesn’t pay very well and the work is seasonal.
This feels like “adding any job no matter the job” is the goal, as opposed to investing in our citizenry through education, training and using subsidies to help with the transitioning to better paying employment like high tech manufacturing, pharmaceutical production, professional trades etc.
We should really be focusing on the quality of jobs added and encourage that growth, preferably with an eye on long term stability
The last admin attempted that, creating well paying union jobs in clean energy and chip manufacturing. But it takes time, TSMC took 3-4 years from breaking ground to startup in Arizona. The electorate expects results immediately, which is impossible. And so, the thrashing continues. You can’t sell long term investment in the US, there is no will, but systems take time and investment to come up to speed.
I agree with what Biden was trying to do and the last part about the thrashing and lack of long term focus.
However I don’t think it’s the electorate that wants it now the same way a petulant child wants a toy. It’s the lack of clear vision and support that makes the electorate so desperate for it to happen. If we were to actually reinvest in our citizenry (meaning the wealthy in this country would need to pay a little more in taxes) and have proper support for people in the meantime the public would be supportive and it would be better for the country as a whole.
Instead it seems the US is trying to inch its way to becoming some type of modern Game of Thrones
> It’s the lack of clear vision and support that makes the electorate so desperate for it to happen. If we were to actually reinvest in our citizenry (meaning the wealthy in this country would need to pay a little more in taxes) and have proper support for people in the meantime the public would be supportive and it would be better for the country as a whole.
What does this look like? Progressive taxes go up, better safety nets, those are straightforward. What does a solid middle class look like when all the cheap labor manufacturing comes back to automation (~8% of US jobs are manufacturing).
The US service sector is almost 80% of the economy. We are walking into perpetual labor shortages due to structural demographics. So perhaps we don’t need “good, union jobs” and instead need to make sure people are paid enough to live comfortable lives, regardless of job (services, manufacturing, whatever). Some combination of universal healthcare (squeeze out the profit potential, cram down non care costs), public housing (see how Austria does it) to prevent investor capture, increasing the minimum wage further faster, etc.
One can argue that the high level of unionization in the 1950s at around a third of the workforce help set an expectation for job compensation. Kind of a “herd-immunity” against low pay.
Maybe it’s not union jobs as you point out, but I agree that there’s a real cost of living crisis where minimum wage jobs are simply too far from a reasonable (not even comfortable) existence.
The public wouldn't be supportive because they have no idea what is going on or how politics is connected to any of it.
For instance, they don't know who was president in 2020, and everyone thought "the economy" was bad for the last four years at the same time as they answered surveys saying they personally were doing great.
Statistics can hide or not capture a lot too. That’s the thing we should be talking about and not enough people looked at hard enough.
Stancil isn’t wrong per se, he’s quite right in many respects but I don’t know that his work captures the many facets of what is (and was at the time) going on
It's not a statistical problem. Economic statistics like that aren't complicated indirect calculations, they literally just call people up and ask how they're doing.
I saw one argument that people didn't like high interest rates, but if everyone is saying they are doing fine but have heard other imaginary people are doing badly, that most likely means they've picked up bad vibes from the media.
> everyone thought "the economy" was bad for the last four years at the same time as they answered surveys saying they personally were doing great
Most of HN would rationally answer a survey that way. High paid tech job, flexible hours, good benefits. But also informed enough to know that many others are struggling and financially insecure.
Depending on how the questions were asked, even a person barely getting by might respond that they were personally doing OK (employed, insured, able to pay rent and groceries) while knowing that the economic situation for their friends, family, neighbors was rough and knowing that if they got laid off tomorrow that they'd struggle to find an equivalent replacement job.
What you said is always true, and was /less/ true during that period (because unemployment was down), so it doesn't make sense that people answered this way more often. They were just wrong.
We aren't really reliant on Canadian timber. The US produces more board-feet of timber than any other country in the world[1], and most of it is used domestically.
If we were dependent on Canadian timber, we probably wouldn't be exporting the exact same lumber to them[1]. They're our largest importer of lumber.
The simpler explanation is that we have (or had) a free trade agreement with Canada, and it's just plain cheaper for all parties to import or export when/where the supply chain is already present.
It could be a distribution cost issue. It could be cheaper to use Canadian lumber in some parts of the US than it is to transport US lumber from where it is sourced to where it is needed.
There are also regional specializations. Like, BC has a substantial amount of Western Red Cedar which the north western states can’t meet the demand for alone.
We also send raw materials to be processed by mills in the USA. This isn’t as common as it once was. Then we also send lumber which US mills process. Some examples would be fir boards would are turned into flooring, window sash, stair treads, etc. BC produces a ton of material like this which is fodder for all kinds of mills, large and small. We try to keep that business here, but we tend to mostly dimension raw materials for export, rather than actually mill them and add any meaningful value.
We import a lot of hardwood lumbers from the USA. I’ve personally bought and milled American hardwoods for furniture in my home. We have beautiful hardwoods in Canada, but there are a lot in the USA we simply don’t grow, or at least not commercially.
There’s also the phenomenon of intra-industry trade. One big example is natural gas, which the US exports to Canada and Mexico, while paradoxically importing natural gas from Canada.
Beef and pork are another example I can think of though, this has to do with specific cuts and quality for various markets.
