Contingent Protection Measures and the Management of the Softwood Lumber Trade in North America: Eleven Rounds with the World Heavyweight Champ

This article examines CanadaÂ’s softwood lumber dispute with the United States in the context of new juridical models of international dispute settlement and an evolving trade policy environment in North America. Two questions are of central importance to this study. First, what does the rise of contingent protection measures mean for CanadaÂ’s regulatory model? Strong antidumping legislation has created a new order of trade conflict at a time when intrasectoral competition has increased state support in a number of sectors. Second, how do American antidumping trade remedy measures come to bear in this dispute? In the softwood case, dispute settlement has been less effective because Canada, as the smaller economy, faces the challenge of enforcing panel decisions when the respondent has the power to avoid compliance.