softwood lumber: sellout?

Hmm. I don't know much about the issues and am therefore not sure what I think about this situation yet. Nonetheless, I wanted to see how foreign news agencies reported the breakthrough. I found the following snippets particularly interesting:

From the Seattle Times:

If the agreement holds, analysts said Americans buying new homes probably should not expect a price break from the deal.
"This is all organized to keep competition down and prices high for U.S. producers," said Gary Hufbauer, an economist at the Institute for International Economics, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
Said Jerry Howard, executive vice president of the National Association of Home Builders: "For an administration that espouses free trade, there is no logical reason to ... engage in one-sided negotiations that would provide a massive subsidy to the U.S. timber industry at the expense of millions of American consumers."

From the Washington Post:

Shares of Canadian lumber companies dropped Thursday, as analysts derided the deal.
Jack Layton, leader of the opposition New Democratic Party, strongly criticized the Conservatives for letting the United States keep $1 billion in penalty duties despite numerous rulings by the World Trade Organization and other panels against the U.S. levies.
Roy Nagel of British Columbia's Central Interior Logging Association, said it seemed aimed more at creating peace with Washington than helping the Canadian industry.

From Canoe:

It remains to be seen whether Canada's willingness to compromise on softwood lumber could set a precedent for other industries. He said other sectors might be tempted to challenge parts of the free-trade agreement.

Which also included this one little ray of sunshine:

"To be very blunt about it, the U.S. forest industry owns Capitol Hill, owns the White House, and calls the shots," he said. "As a result you have had successive presidents and successive administrations acting in the most outrageous manner on the orders of the U.S. industry. . . "The president (George W. Bush) appears to be a little more reluctant to play the kind of thuggish game that the U.S. industry has been demanding."

Despite all the bitterness and accusations of "selling canadians short" on this deal, I believe that securing stability and predictability of market access for the years to come is certainly more important that collecting all the (illegally charged) import duties.