During the election campaign, I was scouring through then presidential candidate Trump's speeches. It may have gone unnoticed in Canada, but he gave a speech within, I think, 13 or 15 kilometres of the Canadian border when he was in the state of Washington. He didn't mention Canada by name, but he talked about the softwood lumber issue. It was clearly in his sights. As I mentioned in my remarks, this has been a long-standing perennial, and he has chosen to play hardball.
I think our biggest challenge, quite frankly, is to mobilize a core constituency in the United States, namely the home builders associations, because taxing imports is going to raise the cost of construction in the United States. In the past they have been important allies for us. I think it's fair to say we haven't heard a whole lot from them on this issue.
The second point I would make is that the economics of the lumber industry, particularly if you look at southern pine in the United States, work against us, because their sources of production are very close to market. Our sources of production are far from market. There are major transportation costs, even once you've got the trees down, to bring them south to market, and that's partly why we have the stumpage fee arrangements that we do.
Having said that, as we negotiate the future of softwood lumber, I think it will be absolutely critical—this is true more generally with NAFTA—that we mobilize key sectors of the industry that are sympathetic to us and do what we've done in the past, which is build a transnational constituency to promote our interests.