Last Year's Tsunami Tore Apart The Miyoshi Lumber Company Here

Last year's tsunami tore apart the Miyoshi lumber company here, launching logs into neighboring buildings and sweeping an employee onto a rooftop where he froze to death. Grieving workers spent weeks cleaning up the family-owned import business, which suffered a $2.5 million loss. But Yukiya Koizumi, Miyoshi Zaimoku Co. President, said Japan's government won't compensate his company or other lumber importers, even as it subsidizes the domestic lumber industry. Koizumi buys Douglas fir beams from Columbia Vista Corp., spending about $120, 000 a month on six or seven shipping containers of lumber milled by the Vancouver company. He said Japan's powerful Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries favors Japanese wood products over foreign lumber. "The ministry subsidizes those who intend to promote domestic forestry, " Koizumi said. "I wish the U. S. Embassy would say something so imported lumber won't be jeopardized. " View full sizeNorthwest mill managers and exporters say the trade discrimination hasn't affected them yet, because of high demand for their products. But they say Japan's favoritism ultimately could hurt sales, so U. S. Diplomats are quietly pushing Japan to open access. Lumber provides a telling example of Japanese trade barriers, echoing the 1980s when U. S. Officials hammered Japan for its huge trade surplus. China gets more attention these days for its far bigger surplus, but the imbalance with Japan persists. Columbia Vista is one of a handful of Northwest companies that have learned to produce lumber for Japan's post-and-beam-style construction. The expanding company with 120 employees remodeled during the late 1980s to cut logs in metric dimensions for sale worldwide. With about $50 million in annual sales, privately owned Columbia Vista mills only Douglas fir, which Japan imports duty-free. In Japan, Kenji Katoh, another importer in Shiogama, said the government provided no compensation for his company's $1.25 million tsunami loss. If his company, Maruhara Co., dealt in domestic lumber, the national government would cover half the loss, and the prefecture would reimburse up to 25 percent. Importers said Japanese officials aim to boost domestic wood products from 26 percent to 50 percent of the market. "They are using this occasion of the tsunami to fulfill the objective by subsidizing only one side, " Katoh said. A Japanese ministry official confirmed that the government expects half the nation's lumber supply will be domestic by 2020. But the official, who responded anonymously to written questions, denied that the government discriminates against imports, saying Japan complies with World Trade Organization requirements. Source: oregonlive