GENEVA, Switzerland — Canada found itself lumped together with China and India on Tuesday as a country the United States believes is using illegal subsidies to distort trade, with $163 million of aid to a Nova Scotia paper mill under scrutiny.
The United States said Canada should withdraw payments to the Port Hawkesbury paper mill, which competes with U.S. producers, including several paper mills in Maine.
The Port Hawkesbury mill has received tax breaks, grants, energy cost reductions and timber subsidies that could be challenged under WTO rules, a U.S. official told the WTO subsidies committee.
U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud in late September called for an investigation of the subsidies Nova Scotia granted the paper mill. U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk confirmed in an Oct. 1 letter that his office would pursue the matter with the Canadian government and bring the issue up at the World Trade Organization’s Committee on Subsidies.
A European Union official said the EU also was concerned about the subsidies and asked for more information.
A Canadian official told the meeting that Canada was already working with the provincial authorities to answer U.S. questions and had started a dialogue with the United States, which the EU was welcome to join.
The Port Hawkesbury mill reopened last month after it had idled for more than a year, following a deal between the provincial power company and the mill’s owner Pacific West Commercial Corp.
Pacific West, which is owned by Stern Partners of Vancouver, bought the mill from NewPage Corp. of Ohio, which had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and began restructuring in September 2011.
Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter has said reopening the mill would bring more than 1,400 jobs to the province.
The Maine mill that will be most affected by the Port Hawkesbury paper mill is UPM’s mill in Madison, which produces 220,000 tons of paper a year and employs about 240 people, mill manager Russ Drechsel told the Bangor Daily News. Both mills produce the same grade of supercalendered paper used for glossy magazines and catalogs.
WE, the U.S. is totally disarmed when going head to head dealing with Canada.
thank clinton for that (NAFTA)
If Clinton wouldn’t have done it, Bush would have. They were both owned by the same people (corporations are people my friend). The multi-national corporations are determined to ruin this Country
Clinton signed it, so the buck stops at the top? They keep blaming Bush for everything, so this is Clinton’s baby.
whats it the US buisness over what Canada chooses to do. US just being a bully again thinking it “controls” the world. I hope Canada doesn’t waste the time with the US bully tactics
if they don’t play ball then the media will start to demonize canada, and after years of propaganda we’ll probably invade them just like we’ve done the other countries that didn’t fall into line or jump when they were told.
Canadian Bacon.
And those petite french women from Montreal !
They should play by the same rules, thank Clinton for NAFTA. Their are other Treaties in place also. All too long subsidies from other countrires give them an unfair advantage. This has nothing to do with bully tactics.
wait a minute, so they’re saying that it’s okay if we give billions upon billions of dollars to corrupt, criminal financial institutions, auto manufacturers, and “green energy” companies, but when other people do it, they’re in trouble?
Why didn’t Mike Michaud say anything about the millions poured in to the paper mill in his home town recently. Why wasn’t anything mentioned about these Millinocket mills selling their hydro power facilities to a company from Canada ? The great Bill Clinton opened up a can of worms when he signed NAFTA in to law. He also became a rich man.
It’s time to use one simple rule. If a product can be bought from a US manufacture and another country wants to import the same product, then charge them an import tariff. Canada did it for years.