While price increases in softwood lumber have pushed new home costs higher due to homebuilders’ extensive use of the material, estimators for all other building types have felt the pinch as well.

从运输系统到高层办公楼的几位承包商都说，木材的成本（尤其是用于混凝土框架）的成本正在损害其底线。承包商还报告了很难获得多种产品，包括软木，钢，铜，铝，隔热材料，屋顶材料和PVC，有足够的数量，一些供应商甚至在其他客户可以支付更多时就取消了原始销售。

“Paying a premium for lumber is obviously not ideal and has added a challenge to several large concrete projects we’re currently managing, but an even greater challenge is the limited availability and the potential schedule risk that represents,” says Josh Lawrence, senior vice president of preconstruction at McCarthy Building Cos. in St. Louis.

According to the executive, supply shortages of plywood are requiring McCarthy project teams to find new ways to get materials, including use of multiple vendors and different product types to procure enough wood to keep concrete forming crews productive and projects on schedule.

David Shier, project executive for the Walsh-Fluor joint venture working on the $1.5-billion Chicago Transit Authority Red/Purple modernization project, says that the team is talking to its client about using a different price index than one from the Illinois Dept. of Transportation, which participants say is not as responsive as necessary with the rapid price shifts in materials this year.

高盛（Goldman Sachs）报道说，过去12个月中，二十年来最糟糕的供应商交付延迟。该银行预计，到年底，交付时间将比正常情况更长，并可能到2022年。在高盛的区域业务调查中包括的问题中，大多数制造商始终报告了自己的供应链中断。

劳伦斯说，大多数商业建筑材料在估计和购买方面仍然具有挑战性，在某些情况下，材料定价和交货时间增加了一倍。

关税动荡

美国相关的总承包商呼吁拜登政府消除特朗普政府对钢铁，铝和木材的关税。

But in late May, the Commerce Dept. instead recommended doubling the tariff on Canadian softwood lumber.

“These [supply] challenges will make it more costly and difficult to achieve the administration’s goals for infrastructure, renewable energy and affordable housing,” AGC President and CEO Stephen Sandherr said June 8. “The President could provide immediate relief from soaring prices for lumber, steel and aluminum by removing harmful tariffs and quotas. Unfortunately, [his] recommendations ignore that quick and effective approach.”

商业部的初步决定建议将大多数加拿大软木木材生产商的关税从当前的9％的反倾销和反误任务提取到18.3％，而特朗普政府在特朗普政府期间施加的关税。如果未采取进一步的行动，新的费率可能会在10月生效。

“在建设面临着材料成本前所未有的激增的时候，要求增加关税和配额可能会施加额外的成本，进一步影响关键产品的价格上涨，例如软木木材，损害建筑行业的整体和新利18备用官网登录交易，并与我们的交易造成了破坏关系。合作伙伴。

“This short-sighted proposal would have a long-term impact on the American people, and the Biden administration must, instead, commit to enacting policies that address this affordability crisis and increase the supply of crucial products like lumber for the U.S.,” he says.

代表该省的木材厂的魁北克木出口局说，商务部使用的方法存在缺陷，因为该部门分析了其价格的进口量发生在2019年。

“您可以基于2020年或2021年初随时可用的价格，”软木董事会经理Sven Gustavsson说，该局的Softwood和增值软木木材的董事会经理说。“在他们的评论中，他们对其进行了调整，并实际上基于2019年的数字。”

The period investigated in the review document is Jan. 1, 2019 through Dec. 31, 2019, when prices were far lower than today. But the U.S. Lumber Coalition, a group of domestic lumber manufacturers, cheered the findings. It insisted that the tariffs in the long-running dispute, which goes back to the Obama administration, were necessary as many Canadian lumber trees are grown on federal land so that Canadian producers pay only “stumpage fees,” which U.S. producers believe are artificially low and a form of subsidy.

“The U.S. Lumber Coalition applauds the Commerce Dept.’s continued commitment to strongly enforce the U.S. trade laws against subsidized and unfairly traded Canadian lumber imports,” said Jason Brochu, co-chair of the group and co-president of Pleasant River Lumber Co., Foxcroft, Maine, in a statement.

Gustavsson of the Quebec bureau disputes the assertion that eastern Canada’s lumber competes for the same customers with the U.S.

“We don’t have any huge-diameter pines [that U.S. producers have],” he says. “Small diameter spruce is, far and away, our market, basically pulp logs that we are turning into two-by-fours and two-by-sixes, so the value is low for those logs, but that little spruce log is being compared with a big southern yellow pine log.”

U.S. contractors are trying to plan the rest of their purchasing year and see higher tariffs in the fall as yet another hurdle to procurement in a year already full of challenges.

“Most suppliers are predicting that pricing will begin to level off in the summer and continue to drop over the next year,” Lawrence says. “But some have warned that as the price drops, the lead times could become even more of an issue as large orders are placed, and resources get further stretched.”