Justin Fox, Columnist

Trump Gives the Gift of High Lumber Prices

Tariffs on softwood lumber from Canada are making timber owners richer and almost everyone else poorer.

May 10, 2018 at 6:58 PM UTC

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business, economics and other topics involving charts. A former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, he is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

What’s the opposite of “timber”?
Photographer: Ty Wright/Bloomberg

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Lumber prices are really high right now! The Chicago Mercantile Exchange futures contract for the softwood two-by-fours used in framing houses closed at its highest price ever on Tuesday, in fact.

If one adjusts for inflation, current prices are no longer record-setting. But an interesting pattern does appear if one adds in a few other key data points.