Page 2— Vernonia Freedom
Thursday August 6,1981
Weaver says exported logs mean job losses at home
To the Editor:
The Oregon Legislature, under the
able leadership of Representative Bill
Bradbury, is attempting to bind an
economic wound that is bleeding the
Northwest's economy to death. I
refer, of course, to the export from
this region of two to three BILLION
board feet of unnulled logs every
year. With sawmills already standing
idle because of high interest rates, we
continue to allow the export of logs,
instead of employment-producing
lumber and plywood, to Japan and
East Asia.
But let me review some of the
Food preservation
seminar scheduled
Chip Bubl, county extension agent,
reports that a canning and food
preservation expert will conduct a
demonstration and answer questions
at the next regularly scheduled
extension meeting here. The
demonstration will last from 9:30 am
to 12 noon at the West Oregon Co-op
building on August 7. The public is
encouraged to attend. Call 397-3462
for further information.
reasons why I feel so strongly about
this issue. Every log that goes out of
this country without being milled into
finished lumber or plywood
represents direct job losses suffered
by our economy. Somewhere else
workers will be turning our forest
resources into high-value finished
products and enriching their economy
by that amount. It is incredible to
think that we would make tax-funded
investments in managing our pulbic
timber and then allow that public
timber to be exported through a
loophole in the law. The efforts of the
state legislature to close that loophole
by eliminating substitution of public
timber for privately exported timber
should be strongly supported.
But we ought to be concerned with
the export of private timber as well.
Exports from any source diminish the
logs available to the northwest's mills
and push the price up for stumpage.
With all the cries about an impending
timber shortage, echoed by many of
the major timber exporting
corporations, one would think these
very same companies would require
everyone else to do so. But, they
don’t, and it is obvious that private
timber owners will not give up
exporting logs until we close our
Hansen’s Country
Garden
Stumped
For A
Gift?
Open Tuesday - Saturday
10 am -5:30 pm
Downtown Vernonia
FLOWERS ARE
ALWAYS
APPROPRIATE!
842 Madison Ave
429-2355
HILLSBORO
PLUMBING
Now serving the Vernonia area every Wednesday
with
COMPLETE AND PROFESSIONAL
PLUMBING SERVICE
trusted
borders against the bleeding of this
prized resource.
Within the Pacific Rim trading
area, the northwest is blessed with a
unique resource in its fine-grained,
old growth sawtimber. Nowhere else
is there the quality nor quantity of
timber available here. If we banned
log exports, the Japanese would not
be able to replace that loss with
Siberian timber as many exporters
claim—the Russian timber is too
difficult to access, is primarily low
quality larch, and is encumbered with
a host of political problems.
Further, New Zealand does not
have the capacity to supply the
volume needed by the Japanese, and
the Far Eastern hardwoods do not
have the qualities of our old-growth
softwoods. Canadians could not
replace our logs, either, because they
have wisely banned the export of
unprocessed logs since 1905. If, out of
spite, the Japanese replaced the log
volume we supplied with Canadian
lumber imports, the northwest would
still benefit. Since Canada now
supplies the U.S. with 29 percent of
the lumber we consume, a diversion of
Canadian lumber to Japan would
allow the northwest to supply a
greater portion of the eastern U.S.
market with lumber.
It is claimed that this is a free trade
issue. Yet the Japanese subsidize
their mills, and the U.S. gives tax
benefits for log exports. Northwest
millowners say they could cut lumber
to Japanese specifications, pay the
shipping costs, and still be
competitive with the products of
Japanese mills. But no one is willing
to invest in such an operation when
he or she knows that the Japanese
will prefer to buy logs, and that trade
barriers exist that prevent the free
flow of U.S. milled lumber to Japan.
Log exporters say we should
negotiate such issues, not legislate
them. This is absolutely ludicrous!
We have waited ten years for fruitless
negotiations with the Japanese to
result in any sustained or significant
increase in exports of American
finished lumber. The Japanese are
willing to protect their workers and
their small businesses by supplying
them with logs at almost any cost. It
is a political issue in Japan, and their
politicians
respond to their
constituents.
At the same time, our mills sit idle,
unprotected by elected officials and
suffering from false arguments about
free trade. The only ones to profit
more from log exports than from
lumber exports are the Japanese
monopoly trading companies, the big
U.S. timber companies (who profit by
the substitution loophole, and
overcut their timberlands to make a
quick, low-employment buck from
exports), and thousands of Japanese
millworkers.
I have always fought log exports,
for the obvious reason that log
exports equal job exports. If it were
simply a matter of free trade, I might
be willing to sit on the sidelines. But,
anyone who thinks that the powerful
corporations involved in log
exporting—the Weyerhaeusers and
Mitsuis, the Crown Zellerbachs,
Mitsubishis, Louisiana Pacifies and
Sumitomos of this world—are “free
traders'', still believe in Santa Claus.
Regardless of much of the rhetoric
clouding the issue, it is basically a few
extremely
powerful
timber
corporations using the present and
future old-growth timber supplies of
the northwest to augment their cash
flows for their own benefit. While
that's just fine for the corporation, it
is not necessarily good for a healthy
and diversified northwest timber
industry—today or tomorrow.
The timber resources of the
northwest—especially public timber
resources—ought to serve the
interests of the people and economy
of the region. Public policy regarding
log exports from any source should
prevent the future impoverishment of
the region's most important industry.
That is why the efforts of
Representative Bradbury and others
in the Oregon Legislature are so
important. Their work will help insure
that the people who pay taxes to
manage
and
maintain
the
productivity of Oregon State
timberlands, will rightfully reap the
consequent economic benefits. That is
why I so strongly commend their
efforts and why I will continue to
fight this critically important issue
on the federal level.
Jim Weaver
Member of Congress
71 grads plan reunion
The
Vernonia
High
School
graduating class of 1971 will hold it's
10 year class reunion August 22,
1981, at the home of Rick and Shelly
Curl. It will be a potluck affair from 3
pm to 8 pm. The class will also be
inviting classmates from previous
years and teachers. For more
information, contact Marilyn Landers
at 429-4543.
CALL COLLECT: 640-2525 experienced
I Please renew my subscription to the
Vernonia Freedom
□ Please enroll me as a new subscriber to the
Vernonia Freedom
I
Vernonia Freedom
Published weekly in Vernonia Oregon, 97064. on Thursdays at 825 Bridge St.
Serving The Upper Nehalem Valley. Phone 129-8/11. Subscriptions, $8 per year.
Deadlines for copy and classified advertising: Monday at > pm for the
following Thursday's paper.
Deadline for display advertising: Friday for normal material and Monday for
after-weekend copy.
Second-Class Postage Paid at Vernonia, OR 97064. Publication No. 474-690.
POSTMASTER: send address changes to Vernonia Freedom. 825 Bridge St..
Vernonia, OR 97064.
.................... . publisher-editor
Dennis Dobson....
publisher-business manager
Ann Dobson...........
MEMBER
429-8111
Oregon
Newspaper
Publishers
Association
I
]
Q One year—$8
Q Two years—$15
Q One year senior citizen (over 65)—$5
Name__________
Street_____________
City._________________ ______________________
Mail payment to: Vernonia Freedom
825 Bridge St
Vernonia, OR 97064