Grrr...

[bcholmes]

Dear United States,

You make such a big deal about other countries violating these international agreements. What is it with you guys and softwood lumber? How many different international organizations have to tell you that you're in violation of treaty?

And why are you just staring blankly as if you have no idea what I'm talking about?

Comments

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

Comes up on NPR -- not all the time, but I'm pretty sure I've heard of it at least twice in the past year. I seem to recall that we're also not lifting our ban on your beef for non-medical reasons.

NPR also dutifully reports on a similar number of cases where we're getting shafted by Europe or Japan and they're not listening to the trade courts. I presume that everyone's doing it for the same reason: in a democracy you don't get re-elected by dissing your own voters to the benefit of some company in another country, treaty or no treaty. You probably need to go to softwood lumber consumers in the US and force them to release a "Our widgets would be more sensibly priced if we didn't have to pay unsound import tarriffs" press barrage, which seemed to have great effect over the steel tarriff brouhaha last year.