Canada's counter-tariffs came into force on 8 September, and the 50% line on dissolving-grade wood pulp has been read as protection for Canadian producers. RYAM's own quarterly filing shows it permanently stopped making dissolving pulp at Témiscaming two quarters before the tariff existed, and the rest of that site stops on 15 September.
Every figure below is linked to a source you can open, and each one is the issuing body or the company's own filing, not a report of it. Where we couldn't open a source we left the claim out, and say so at the end.
What the counter-tariff list covers
The Department of Finance publishes the list itself, and it's worth reading first hand. The counter-tariffs took effect at 12:01 a.m. on 8 September 2026 and cover $27.6 billion of US imports.
Sawn softwood, listed as pine, fir, spruce, S-P-F and hem-fir, is charged at 25%. Plywood and laminated veneer lumber go at 50%, and so does the line most of the coverage has skipped: "chemical wood pulp, dissolving grades". Paper straddles both rates, with tissue and lighter coated kraft at 25%, and heavier coated kraft, uncoated kraft, multi-ply and packaging grades at 50%.
The list we read doesn't carry OSB, veneer, particleboard or fibreboard as separate items, so a US strand board mill shipping north sits outside this round. These are also Canadian tariffs on American goods entering Canada, so a Canadian importer pays the 50% on dissolving pulp, and it only protects anyone where there's Canadian output to switch to.
The plant that stopped making what the tariff protects
RYAM files with the SEC, so the company's own account is on the record. Its quarterly report for the period ended 27 June 2026 says that "in the first quarter of 2026, the Company determined to permanently cease DWP production at the site", meaning dissolving wood pulp at Témiscaming.
The decision carried $35m of accelerated depreciation and $6m of other asset adjustments, $41m in all. The filing records that it removed the primary economic justification for operating the high purity cellulose facility. That facility had already been suspended indefinitely in July 2024, at $19m of cumulative one-time charges.
On 31 August the company said it would suspend nearly all remaining activity at the complex from 15 September, affecting more than 400 unionised employees. Only the wastewater treatment plant and Boiler No. 4 keep running, and there's no date for a restart.
Compressed, this reads as "US tariffs shut RYAM mill". In sequence it's three decisions across two years, and only the last is dated after the tariffs it gets attributed to. The dissolving pulp exit was settled in the first quarter, roughly two quarters before Canada's counter-tariff list existed, and the filing doesn't discuss US tariffs or duties in connection with the Canadian operations at all. It does show the pressure the site is under: a net loss attributable to RYAM of $114.4m for the first half of 2026.
On 8 September Canada raised the landed cost of dissolving-grade pulp for Canadian buyers whose nearest domestic supply had already shut.
The rate you pay, and the rate you keep hearing
Most Canadian softwood lumber entering the United States pays 45.16% today. The figure moving around the industry is closer to 35%, off the same schedule, and not in force.
The US re-sets these duties every year in an administrative review, and each review publishes in stages: preliminary, post-preliminary, final. Only the final takes effect, as Global Affairs Canada's schedule says plainly.
What you pay now comes from the sixth review, amended final on 11 September 2025. What's being quoted comes from the seventh review's post-preliminary results of 30 June 2026, which haven't taken effect. On top of either sits the 10% Section 232 tariff on softwood timber and lumber, imposed on 14 October 2025. Both rate columns below already include it.
| Producer | Paying today6th review final + Section 232 | Being quoted7th review post-preliminary, not in force | The gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| All Others | 45.16% | 35.18% | 9.98 points |
| Canfor | 57.59% | 41.37% | 16.22 points |
| West Fraser | 36.47% | 30.92% | 5.55 points |
| Resolute | not given in the schedule we could open | 35.49% | not calculable |
Canfor's 16.22 points is larger than the entire Section 232 tariff, so for some producers this review decides more than the tariff that gets argued about.
The quoted column has moved already. In July we wrote that April's preliminary put the combined duty at 24.83%, and June's post-preliminary moved it to 25.18%. It also hasn't arrived: the final was expected in August 2026, or October if fully extended, and we couldn't open a published final result.
These rates apply to entered value, not to a price index. Multiplying the gap by Madison's US$518 per thousand board feet, as we have seen done elsewhere, gives the wrong number.
A mill closed anyway, and tariffs are not the reason given
Montrose Forest Products filed a WARN notice and will close by November 2026, taking 90 direct jobs. Capacity is put at up to 80 MMBF. Log procurement had it "down to less than 40MMBF", with increased diesel costs making longer hauls uneconomic. Tariffs don't appear in that account.
Fixed cost per thousand board feet is fixed cost divided by throughput, so halving throughput roughly doubles it. A mill running under 40 MMBF carries every fixed dollar on fewer than half the units it was built for, and no tariff reaches that.
It closed into a rising price, too. The Madison's Lumber Prices Index was US$518 mfbm for the week ending 4 September, "up +9%, or +$41, from the same week last year when it was US$477", though down 3% on the month. Imports were walled off at 45.16% and the price was up year on year, and the logs still couldn't be got to the deck at a cost that worked.
What operators on both sides actually want
Producers and buyers on both sides tell us they want both sets of duties gone, which is not how the schedule reads on paper. The Canadian mill wants the US rate lifted. The US converter buying Canadian panel wants its own government's tariffs lifted too. Even where a duty nominally protects them, the people we speak to treat it as a cost: it raises what they pay for inputs and makes their customers' planning harder. Nobody we've spoken to is planning around the protection lasting.
They then put the same question to their own finance team: which of our lines are exposed, at what rate, and what does the alternative cost? Almost nobody can answer inside the week it gets asked, because the duty schedule and the company's own catalogue have never been joined up. That's true whichever way the policy goes, which is why we don't take a position on it.
Sources
- Department of Finance Canada, list of products subject to counter-tariffs, for the 8 September 2026 effective date and time, the $27.6 billion covered, the 25% on sawn softwood, the 50% on plywood, LVL and "chemical wood pulp, dissolving grades", and the paper lines
- Rayonier Advanced Materials, quarterly report for the period ended 27 June 2026, filed with the SEC, for the first-quarter decision to permanently cease DWP production at Témiscaming, the $35m and $6m charges, the July 2024 suspension and its $19m of cumulative charges, and the $114.4m half-year net loss
- PaperAge, 31 August 2026, for the announcement date, the 15 September halt, the more than 400 employees affected, and the units kept running
- Global Affairs Canada, softwood lumber, for the sixth review's amended final rates of 11 September 2025 and the 10% Section 232 tariff of 14 October 2025, and recent developments for the seventh review's post-preliminary results of 30 June 2026 and the statement that they do not take effect
- Timber Processing, for the Montrose WARN notice, the 90 direct jobs, the closure by November 2026, the 80 MMBF capacity against less than 40MMBF actual, and the diesel and log haul reasons
- Madison's Lumber Reporter, for the US$518 mfbm index for the week ending 4 September 2026 and the weekly, monthly and annual changes
Some things are left out for want of a source we could open. We put no value on the American dissolving pulp trade into Canada, so the $27.6 billion above is the whole counter-tariff package and not the pulp line. We do not quote RYAM's own reasoning for the 15 September suspension in the company's words, because the only direct quote we could open was a spokesperson saying the duration is undetermined, and the filing predates the announcement. And every rate described here as in force is the sixth review's amended final plus the 10% Section 232 tariff; the seventh review's final result had not been published when this was written, so nothing here should be read as saying the lower rates apply. And the section on what operators want is the one claim here with no link behind it: it reports our own conversations with producers and buyers, it is not a survey, and it should be weighed on that basis.