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Disputes about Canadian exports of softwood lumber to the U.S. have persisted for more than a century. In this paper the roots of the disputes and the prospects for their resolution are examined. The focus is on the following key factors: (1) the nature of supply and demand; (2) the normative differences underlying the systems of timber management in the two countries and differences about what constitutes a “level playing field”; (3) rent seeking by stakeholders; and (4) weakness in bilateral and multilateral trade dispute resolution institutions. The paper concludes that there are good reasons to expect short term solution to the current dispute but persistence of the disputes in the long run.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the issues in the US‐Canada trade dispute over lumber trade, to analyze the US and Canada's claims and positions in this dispute, and make projections of future possibilities regarding this dispute.

The research method is to review published studies dealing with this dispute and gather public and private data pertaining to issues involved in this dispute.

The paper finds that the US lumber industry's claims of unfair trade by Canada's lumber industry are not supported. Canada is in compliance with World Trade Organization policies and North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)'s agreement. US antidumping and countervailing tariffs on imported Canadian lumber violate NAFTA's rules. Past and current resolutions to this dispute are temporary.

This paper explores the real reasons behind the dispute and evaluates the merits of the interim solutions.

The paper extends the robust political economy framework to analyze the impact of tariffs on the entrepreneurial market process. It proposes that the unintended consequences of using trade policy to bolster a nation's economy will inevitably prevent an economy from allocating its resources to their highest-valued use. The study aims to expand the robust political economy literature to international trade.

The paper develops a robust analysis of trade policy and illustrates it with two case studies of trade wars: The Chicken War (1963) and the US–Canada softwood lumber disputes (1982-present).

The paper provides theoretical insights into how the entrepreneurial market process is distorted by trade barriers. The case studies show that the theoretical insights have real-world implications that should not be ignored when planning trade policy.

This paper applies a robust political economy framework to international trade.

We first discuss what fairness may mean in the context of the dispute settlement process, noting the crucial relation between fairness in dispute settlement and the functioning of the trading system as a whole. We explore this relation further through an analysis of three main groups of dispute settlement cases. These are cases that turn around the question of defining fair competition; cases that arise from the use of contingency measures; and cases that draw the boundaries between domestic regulatory measures and the trade-related norms and rules of the WTO. There follows an analysis of experience with compliance and with the use of countermeasures in various cases. Finally, taking together the rulings of the Dispute Settlement Body and the procedures for compliance and the use of countermeasures, we conclude that while the present dispute settlement process serves to protect the fairness of the trading system as a whole, there are some aspects of dispute settlement that remain problematic from the standpoint of fairness.

Trade war among the nations dates back mainly to the nineteenth century. Some of the trade wars may be cited as (i) The First and Second Opium War Empire between 1839 and 1842; (ii) The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, 1930 signed by US President Herbert Hoover; (iii) Chicken wars in the early 1960s; (iv) The US–Japan automobile trade war in the 1980s; (v) 1985 Pasta War between America under the Regan Administration of United States and Europe; (vi) The Banana wars. However, trade becomes more intense in the present century with the increase of the economic trade instruments. Under the Obama Administration, currency war and tariff war both became strong between the United States and China with intense effect over the globe. After the Obama regime, came Donald John Trump with a number of controversial (aggressive) trade protectionism plans saying thereby “China’s accession to the World Trade Organization has enabled the greatest jobs theft in history” and “Trillions of our dollars and millions of our jobs flowed overseas as a result.” Even during the COVID-19 period in the 2020s, threats and counter-threats have been on the ascend. It is in this backdrop the present chapter mainly traces the history of trade wars in the twenty-first century, touching upon the nineteenth and twentieth century trade battles.

Of late, the issue which has attracted the highest attention in the global scenario is the US–China trade relation, in particular the tariff war. The biggest nations in the world are in war with each other in matters related to trade since 2018. In the first quarter, the United States imposed a tariff which affected many countries like Canada, the EU, Mexico, the Russian Federation, Turkey, and, in developing Asia, India and the People’s Republic of China. This has resulted in a significant dampening of global output growth and growth in emerging nations of Asia. The present chapter seeks to investigate into the historical evidences of trade wars between the United States and China, major reasons responsible for this conflict and tries to figure out the impact of this conflict on fundamental macro variables using secondary time-series data primarily on selected Asian economies including India. The author uses the multiple regression technique to find to what extent changes in the independent variables are responsible in explaining the changes in the dependent variable for both China and the United States. The empirical results clearly show that in the case of China and the United States, an increase in weighted tariff rates (WTR) will lead to a significant decrease in the trade GDP ratio (TGR), whereas in the case of both these countries, Purchasing Power Parity GNI (PPPGNI) is positively and significantly associated in determining TGR. In the case of India, a decrease in WTR is expected to lead to a rise in TGR and it is significant. In case of Vietnam, PPPGNI is significant, but not WTR. In the case of Singapore, neither of the two independent variables is significant.