The decision by President Joe Biden to sharply increase the tariff on Canadian softwood lumber to 17.99 percent is threatening housing affordability and has prompted calls from The Wall Street Journal and homebuilders for the White House to take quick action to reverse course.
More than one-quarter of softwood lumber—such as pine, cedar, fir, and spruce—used in America comes from Canada. The new tariff is twice the 8.99 percent rate in effect when Biden took office in January. It comes on the heels of wholesale lumber prices which tripled from July 2020 to July 2021, adding nearly $30,000 to the average cost of a new home, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).
The NAHB says the increased tariff is adding on average another $9,000 to the price of a new home compared to July. It is also pushing up prices of renovation and remodeling projects that are critical for ensuring affordable housing options in many communities.
“The doubling of duties on Canadian softwood lumber is ill-timed and ill-advised,” NAHB Chairman John C. Fowke wrote to Biden on Dec. 3. “As has been the case for decades, the domestic lumber industry cannot, nor will not, produce enough lumber to meet U.S. consumer demand. We rely on lumber from Canada to fill the production gap, so punitive tariffs on our closest and best trading partner on a product that American consumers desperately need defies logic.”
Top NAHB officials met at the Canadian Embassy in Washington DC last week to discuss the tariffs. After the meeting, Fowke send his letter to Biden, calling on U.S. trade officials to negotiate with the Canadian government for a lumber trade agreement that eliminates tariffs and ensures a fairly priced supply of lumber.
“The tariffs harm housing affordability by acting as a tax on American home builders and home buyers, and contribute to huge price volatility in the lumber market by putting upward pressure on lumber prices,” Fowke wrote.
The association, which has 140,000 members across the country, also called on Biden to support efforts to increase domestic lumber production. “Improving the health of our nation’s forests and increasing the supply of domestic timber are not mutually exclusive goals,” Fowke wrote.
Last month the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board noted that prices for U.S.-produced lumber is at more than 75 percent above pre-pandemic levels.
“For decades U.S. sawmills haven’t been able to meet domestic demand, but they’ve leaned on government to protect their market share,” the WSJ’s opinion stated. “The shortage would be much worse if not for Canadian lumber, which backs up U.S. output.”
The tariffs, the WSJ wrote, “will raise building costs in an already strained housing market.”
Then last week, The Washington Post’s editorial board published an opinion succinctly titled “Biden is hiking lumber tariffs at the wrong time.”
And the editorial board for the Las Vegas Review-Journal wrote that driving up the cost of lumber via tariffs will discourage construction and worsen inventory shortages for southern Nevada. “Much like the weather, politicians love to talk about affordable housing but none of them want to do anything about it. Put the Biden administration firmly in that camp,” the Review-Journal noted.
Data from the Census Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) indicated that nearly 1.2 million Arizona workers would lose their jobs under President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate. Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) office conducted the research, published through the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Businesses & Entrepreneurship days before Thanksgiving.
The 1.2 million workers account for 33 percent of Arizona’s workforce. Compliance would further cost Arizona businesses at least $70 million total. The main types of workers impacted come from America’s backbone: wholesale trade, retail, and manufacturing. These three categories of workers were largely classified as “essential workers” throughout 2020 and this year. Arizona ranked 12th for the number of workers it may lose, after California (nearly 4.8 million), Texas (over 4.5 million), Florida (over 2.9 million), New York (over 2 million), Ohio (nearly 1.9 million), Georgia (over 1.8 million), Illinois (nearly 1.7 million), Pennsylvania (under 1.7 million), North Carolina (under 1.6 million) Michigan (under 1.5 million), and Tennessee (over 1.2 million).
According to the research, nearly 45 million workers nationwide are at risk of losing their jobs: about 22 percent of the nation’s entire workforce, ringing in at a compliance cost of at least $1.29 billion.
According to Senator @RandPaul and the @SmallBizCmteGOP, over ONE MILLION Arizona workers are at risk of losing their jobs because of Biden's unconstitutional COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
That's why our office continues to take action to protect hardworking taxpayers. pic.twitter.com/OMq0CJ64vJ
Biden’s vaccine mandate relied on the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to require companies with 100 or more employees to have employees fully vaccinated or following standard COVID-19 safety protocols: masking and weekly testing. The mandate would require companies to provide paid time off for workers who get vaccinated, but it wouldn’t require costs of acquiring tests – though individual states or local laws might.
Based on recent court rulings, it’s unclear when the vaccine mandate would be implemented. A federal appeals court halted Biden’s vaccine mandate last month. Another federal court also halted a similar Biden mandate requiring Medicare and Medicaid health care workers to get vaccinated, in a case launched by a coalition involving Attorney General Mark Brnovich. Following that ruling, OSHA decided to suspend enforcement of the mandate.
The vaccine mandate also may face a challenge in the legislature. The Senate will vote on a resolution to effectively bar Biden’s vaccine mandate. Through the Congressional Review Act (CRA), the House and Senate may overturn a federal regulation without presidential approval. However, such a resolution would likely not advance in the Democrat-controlled House.
Last month, one of Biden’s chief economic advisors, Jared Bernstein, toldCNBC that adverse financial impacts due to the mandate would be overshadowed by the economic growth afforded by vaccinations. When asked if the Biden Administration expected companies to sacrifice their revenue growth, Bernstein said that he couldn’t speak for individual companies and that many would face “a very different outlook.”
“Those forecasts are for 4.5 and 6 percent. The connection between a strong economy and vaccinations and the trajectory of the caseload is extremely clear to me – and, in fact, quite elastic, it happens very quickly. And, of course, that is the motivation behind the vaccination program,” said Bernstein. “I’ve looked at almost every important variable I could find. Yet that does certainly make the case that vaccines, economic progress, strong growth, revenue growth, income growth, wage growth, jobs, GDP, industrial production – every variable I look at seems highly and positively elastic to these wiggles in the caseload.”
Bernstein serves on the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) alongside Chairwoman Cecilia Elena Rouse and fellow member Heather Boushey. Rouse served under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama on the National Economic Council (NEC) and CEA, respectively. Boushey would have served as the chief economic advisor for failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s transition team.
According to the CDC, a vast majority of the elderly are either partially or fully vaccinated. 88.8 percent of individuals aged 50 to 64, 99.9 percent of individuals aged 65 to 74, and 97.7 percent of individuals over 75. About 10 percent of those from each age range are awaiting their second dosage.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Democratic Senators Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema will likely support the Biden Administration and Democrats’ $3.5 trillion tax plan, causing Americans to pay more in corporate taxes in Arizona than in China. The bill was derived from President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Plan, and it would be the largest spending bill in American history.
If the bill passes, the federal-state corporate tax rate in Arizona would jump to over 30 percent, while China’s tax rate would be around 25 percent. That’s not including those enterprises in certain industries supported heavily by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which could receive a tax rate as low as 10 to 15 percent. Additionally, the bill would cause capital gains tax in Arizona to rise up over 35 percent, while China’s would ring in around 20 percent. This data was compiled by Americans for Tax Reform.
Back in July, Sinema expressed lack of support for the bill in July over its price tag, but not its content. At that point, Kelly hadn’t made a commitment to the bill either.
“I have also made clear that while I will support beginning this process, I do not support a bill that costs $3.5 trillion,” said Sinema. “And in the coming months, I will work in good faith to develop this legislation with my colleagues and the administration to strengthen Arizona’s economy and help Arizona’s everyday families get ahead.”
However, both Sinema and Kelly voted in favor of the framework for the $3.5 trillion plan last month.
The Biden Administration and Democratic Party’s proposed tax increases would cause the U.S. to have one of the highest capital gains taxes in the world.
Analysts with the Tax Foundation estimated that the impact of this policy would reduce the GDP by about one percent: more than $2 for every $1 in new tax revenue, or about $332 billion of lost output annually. Over the course of a decade, the cumulative GDP would reduce by nearly $1.2 to $1.8 trillion, which they stated would far exceed the amount of revenue the plan would raise in the same amount of time.
All while eliminating an estimated 303,000 full-time jobs. The primary cause for these projected negative changes comes from the proposed corporate tax rate. They estimate that this alone would reduce the GDP by .6 percent and eliminate 107,000 jobs.
As for after-tax incomes, they estimated that individual taxpayers would see an average reduction of $800 each year.
The Tax Foundation’s Senior Policy Analyst, Garrett Watson, assessed that ultimately, low- and middle-income families would feel these repercussions the most.
“The economic harm caused by the tax increases would claw back some of the plan’s expanded tax credits aimed at low- and middle-income families. For those in the bottom 30 percent, it would reduce the average net benefit of the plan per filer from $341 to $233, a 30 percent reduction,” wrote Watson. “Before accounting for economic effects, filers in the middle quintile would see a decrease in average after-tax income of about $38 – mostly due to the corporate tax increases – but that would rise to a $493 drop in average after-tax income every year when including the negative economic effects. The top quintile would see a $1,287 drop in average after-tax income, rising to a $3,861 drop in average after-tax income on a dynamic basis.”
They also noted that these proposed changes would raise a net federal revenue of around $1.1 trillion from next year to 2031, without accounting for dynamic factors like the estimated reduction in economy size. However, that revenue would be reduced by $1 trillion in tax credits. If dynamic factors weren’t excluded, federal revenue would ring in around $804 billion in revenue net of tax credits.
Per a poll released by Navigator Research earlier this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed that an overwhelming majority of Americans supported the Build Back Better Act. The results meted out to 66 percent of Americans, 61 percent of independents, and 39 percent of Republicans.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
It felt like we were heading this direction for quite some time. Well, here we are. Last week, President Biden made an outrageous announcement. Any employer that has 100 or more employees will be required to mandate vaccines. Not only is this a blatant abuse of power, but it ignores the fact that issues like this are supposed to be left to states.
And Arizona’s lawmakers, who were elected by the people, did address this back in July, taking keep steps to protect our state from more COVID overreach. In particular, the state legislature passed SB1819, which includes a provision that amends the ability of the state to require vaccination during a public health emergency to allow for an individual to refuse vaccination based on their personal beliefs.
But apparently, our president—or is he our king now—does not care one bit about your freedom or personal choice.
Instead, King Biden would rather maneuver around the U.S. Constitution and use the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to establish this ridiculous “emergency workplace safety rule.”
Remember when this was just about “flattening the curve”? It wasn’t that long ago.
And it also wasn’t that long ago when then-Senator Kamala Harris said she would not take the vaccine if President Trump mandated it. This administration can’t even get its own talking points straight. Or maybe that’s just something else they don’t care about.
But there is something they do want: to take away more of your freedoms. That’s why the Arizona Free Enterprise Club jumped into action immediately. For the past week, we’ve been urging Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich to sue the Biden administration. This vaccine mandate will affect more than 100 million Americans. And it is one of the most extreme infringements on both businesses and individual rights in U.S. history…
The Air Force says there’s a “high chance of disapproval” for COVID-19 vaccination religious exemptions, according to documents obtained by AZ Free News. This predetermination was issued in a BLUF statement – military communications jargon for “bottom line up front” to indicate key points of information.
“In the case of a religious accommodation for the COVID-19 Immunization, there is a high chance of disapproval,” read the BLUF. “Of the five reasons to disapprove a religious accommodation this meets three. Adverse impact on: mission accomplishment, military readiness, [and] the health and safety of the member or unit.”
Accompanying the BLUF was a comprehensive instructional guide on the religious exemption process. Service members must compile a “religious accommodation request package.” In addition to their initial request, service members must include documentation from counseling by their unit commander, military medical provider, and a chaplain. Once those are submitted, a staff judge advocate will submit a written legal review on the case.
All documents compiled in the religious accommodation request package at that point will be handed over to a “Religious Resolution Team” (RRT) for review. RRT members may include the Chaplain Corps, Judge Advocate Generals (JAG), Public Affairs Office, and a medical provider.
The guide also inserted some counterpoints to possible concerns about the COVID-19 vaccine within critical thinking prompts. In response to one question about whether the service member could finish their military commitment without this accommodation, the critical thinking prompt equated the safety and efficacy of other vaccinations proven by years of research and trials to the COVID-19 vaccine.
“I have every other vaccination under the sun in my body already, I think I can handle one more,” read the prompt.
The critical thinking prompt also equated concerns about the experimental nature of the COVID-19 vaccine to the annual flu shot.
“If in a year from now the same shot is mandatory, but has full FDA approval would I be willing to take it? (The flu shot has been experimental every year for the past however many I have been in the military,)” read the prompt.
It appears that the Air Force may not be the only branch that may severely restrict religious exemptions for COVID-19 vaccinations. A press release from the Army alluded that they were considering religious exemptions based on similar criterias: military readiness, unit cohesion, good order and discipline, and health and safety.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
