Lumber prices enter the mainstream

Tuesday’s first business page of the New York Times featured a long, jumping article under the headline “Lumber Prices Raise Stakes In an Old Feud With Canada.”

The article covered the rising cost of lumber, the long-running international, softwood-lumber trade dispute between the U.S. and Canada, and the difference of opinion between the home builders and the sawmills when it comes to duties on imports.

Readers of HBSDealer are probably very familiar with many of the themes, statistics and people used to tell the story in the nation’s Paper of Record.

Among them:

• An April estimate from the National Association of Home Builders that rising lumber costs have added $36,000 to new single-family prices; previously reported in HBSDealer here.

• An aggressive quote from NAHB Chairman Chuck Fowke, a Florida builder, in which he describes the mindset of the White House as one that “does not care about the plight of American home buyers and renters,” previously reported here.

• Also, background on the U.S.-Canada softwood lumber dispute. previously reported here, here and here.