Yes, we're going to be far worse off. We took our first hit under the softwood lumber agreement of 1996, when there was quota, and our quota was insufficient. But at least at that time, if you had more shipments to make, you could pay 2.5% or $50 a thousand. You'd get 2.5%, then $100 a thousand after that, and keep on shipping.
We took a really severe hit this time around, but that's okay. Our guys say we'll stick it out. We'll pay 27% to see this thing through and beat the Americans, because we don't think they'll get another case together if we actually finish this thing.
Yes, we took quite a beating, and employment has been down about 25% among our members. Our shipments into the U.S. are down about 30%.
What this agreement does is kind of institutionalize the penalities the Department of Commerce has been imposing on us for the benefit of the coalition. It takes a 10.5% tax duty or duty anti-dumping thing, which we've been paying, and makes it 15%. The prospect is there of making it 22.5%. And if we ever go onto a quota system, God help the little guys, because there is no mechanism to ship one more board foot than the quota you have. By definition, you know that you're not going to have enough quota.
There's no more saying we'll just pay an extra $50 and we can get it across. If you have order for 110,000 board feet and you have 109,000 board feet, you don't ship it, or you leave that 1,000 feet sitting in your yard.
It's really bad, and we're going to see more business failures. People are just going to give up, people who were hanging on by their fingernails through this fight. We were assured that we were going to finish it, and we didn't. A lot of people are just going to wrap it up, and a lot of them are going to be taken down.