If you’ve seen headlines this summer warning that Canadian lumber tariffs are about to “jump,” here’s the correction worth noting: the U.S. Department of Commerce isn’t proposing to raise the rate. It’s proposing to cut it — and the final call is expected any day now.

Where the Rate Actually Stands

Right now, most Canadian softwood lumber entering the U.S. faces a combined anti-dumping and countervailing duty rate of 35.16%, layered on top of a separate 10% global Section 232 tariff on softwood lumber and timber that’s applied regardless of country of origin. Together, that’s pushed the effective combined rate on most Canadian producers above 45% — among the steepest in the multi-decade history of this trade dispute.

That’s the backdrop. The move happening right now is Commerce’s seventh administrative review of the anti-dumping and countervailing duty orders, covering trade activity during calendar year 2024. And the preliminary numbers, published in April, point the other direction from what some suppliers have been telling customers:

• Preliminary antidumping rate: down to 10.66%, from 20.53%
• Preliminary countervailing rate: down to 14.17%, from roughly 14.63%
• Preliminary combined rate: 24.83%, down 10.33 percentage points from the current 35.16%

Layer the unchanged 10% Section 232 tariff back on top, and the effective all-in rate would fall from about 45% to roughly 34.83% — a meaningful drop, not an increase.

The Catch: None of This Is Final Yet

Preliminary results don’t take effect. The current 35.16% AD/CVD rate stays in force until Commerce issues its final determination, which multiple trade sources — including Canadian government trade officials and the National Association of Home Builders — put at “as early as August 2026,” with a fallback deadline into October if the review is extended. Commerce named Resolute and West Fraser as mandatory respondents for the following year’s review in the spring, and issued post-preliminary countervailing results on June 30 — signs the process is moving, but still short of a final, binding number.

In other words: as of this writing, contractors and suppliers throughout Oregon and Washington are pricing lumber against a rate that could hold, drop meaningfully, or — given how volatile this dispute has been over the past year — get revised again before the ink is dry.

Why the “Prices Are About to Spike” Framing Is Backwards

At least one regional supplier has been telling customers to lock in orders now “ahead of an August tariff increase” to 35.9%. That framing doesn’t match the current administrative record: there is no scheduled increase pending for August. What’s pending is a decision on whether to cut the rate. It’s possible short-term price movement is happening for other reasons — tighter sawmill capacity, seasonal demand, general market uncertainty while the outcome is unresolved — but attributing it to an incoming tariff hike gets the direction of the actual trade case backwards.

That distinction matters for anyone budgeting a framing package this fall. If the final determination lands anywhere near the preliminary 24.83% combined rate, contractors carrying multi-month project budgets could see real relief on Canadian SPF costs by Q4 — the opposite of what “lock in before the increase” messaging implies.

It doesn’t take a multi-unit development to feel this. A straightforward three-rail wood fence — no gates, no fancy hardware, nothing beyond basic lumber — can run well over $700 in materials alone. There’s no labor complexity to offset a swing like that; it’s straight lumber cost, passed directly to the homeowner. That’s the scale at which these tariff percentages stop being abstract.

The Bigger Picture for PNW Contractors

This dispute has been running, in some form, since 1982, and it isn’t close to resolved. The National Association of Home Builders has estimated that combined tariffs and duties on Canadian lumber have added at least $10,000 to the cost of a new single-family home, and U.S. softwood lumber imports from Canada fell roughly 28% year-over-year heading into 2026 as the trade fight dragged on. For a region where Douglas fir and other regional softwoods compete directly with — and are priced relative to — Canadian SPF imports, the outcome of this review has real downstream effects on framing budgets whether or not a given project uses Canadian lumber directly.

The practical advice for contractors bidding work into Q4: build in a rate-outcome contingency rather than assuming either direction, and watch for Commerce’s final determination this month. It’ll be the first real data point since this review opened.Sources: U.S. Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration (trade.gov); Global Affairs Canada — Softwood Lumber Recent Developments; Government of British Columbia — Softwood Lumber Trade Dispute; National Association of Home Builders (NAHB); Wood Central; HBS Dealer / National Lumber and Building Material Dealers Association (NLBMDA)