Transcripts For CSPAN2 20170425

Short videos paired with vocabulary and discussion questions that a make the federal government and politics more accessible to your students. I love the bell ringers. A lot of times i dont use them as actual bell ringers, but ill use them in cop junction with an activity conjunction that were doing that day. The new web site is just fabulous. My students use it regularly, and its so easy, in fact, that they are right now on clipping videos and making questions that they can design and turn into their own bell ringers. Probably my favorite aspect of the cspan classroom is the deliberations page. Its just a perfectly setup, ready to go classroom deliberation, classroom discussion on just a variety of topics that are current and relevant today. If youre a middle school or high school teacher, join thousands of your fellow teachers across the nation as a member of cspan classroom. Its free, and its easy to register at cspan. Org classroom. And if you register now, you can request our free classroomsize american president s timeline poster, a graphic display of the biographies of all 45 president s. Find out more about it as cspan. Org class room. At the start of the White House Briefing, commerce secretary wilbur ross announced the white house has imposed a 20 tariff called countervailing duties on softwood lumber from canada. He said the move may cause a maul increase a small increase in the price of lumber. You can see the White House Briefing at cspan. Org. Heres some of what the commerce secretary said. We have determined preliminarily that those problems, while they vary from one province to another, in some cases are as high as roughly 25 . And on average, are around 20. So theyre quite material items. So what, the preliminary decision that was put out yesterday imposes those countervailing duties on softwood lumber from canada. Those duties will be collected starting today, and they will be collected on a retroactive basis going back 90 days, because it was 90 days ago that the canadians were put on notice about this being an inappropriate process. What it amounts to is the following this is roughly 15 billion worth of hardwood softwood lumber used in houses in this country, and about 31. 5 of that comes from the canadians. So thats roughly 5 billion a year. 20 tariff on that is, essentially, a billion dollars a year. And the retrospective 90day feature adds another 250 million to that on a onetime basis. Softwood lumber, as i say, is the fundamental used in singlefamily houses. We do not think that the price of lumber will go up by anything like the 20 , but there may be some small increase in the price of lumber for the house. So will housing prices be increased in the United States due to that action . Not necessarily, because youre talking such a small amount. And the biggest part of most home prices in any event is the land value, not the lumber value. Lumber is a pretty small percentage of the total cost of a house. Mr. Secretary, what provoked this . As you mentioned, this has been a longrunning dispute, subject of conversation between the u. S. And canadian government with the Bush Administration and the obama administration. Is this part of the milk dispute, and is in this a bargaining chip with the canadian government with that dispute going on as well . This investigation had been underway before anything came up about milk. And on a chew story basis, the last statutory basis, the last day we could have released the findings would have been today. So the only thing we did do is accelerating it one day. Mr. Ross, related not at all to the milk dispute, do you see it as factoring in the canadian judgment about how to respond or resolve some of these other trade disputes . Well, everything relates to Everything Else when youre trying to negotiate, so i cant say theres no impact. But what we had tried to do was to clear the air and get this dispute out of the way before the big nafta talks went on. That was not possible to achievement and, and thats to achieve, and thats why we went ahead and released the findings. [inaudible conversations] canada is an extremely close ally and neighbor. Are you comfortable with what it means to the overall relationship between our two countries . Well, they are a close ally, theyre an important ally. Theyre generally a Good Neighbor. That doesnt mean they dont have to play by the rules. What do you mean by generally a Good Neighbor . Well, things like this i dont regard as being a Good Neighbor, dumping lumber. And theres a feeling in the dairy industry that theyre a little bit abrupt in the action that they took the week before. Cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up wednesday morning, new York Democratic congressman tom swaz city, vice chair of the problem solvers caucus, discusses the upcoming budget deadline and tax reform. Then, Pennsylvania Republican congressman tim murphy, cochair of the congressional Mental Health caucus, talks about federal Mental Health and Substance Abuse policies. And bradford fitch, Congressional Management Foundation president and ceo, on Health Care Options for members of congress. Be sure to watch cspans washington journal live at seven a. M. Eastern wednesday morning. Join the discussion. Joining us from capitol hill on this tuesday is steven dynan, he covers congress for the washington times. Thank you for being with us. My pleasure. The talks continue to avert a friday government shutdown, so where do things stand this evening . Guest right now as of this afternoon, you had negotiations going on up here on capitol hill from all sides. Essentially, the top members of the appropriations committees, republicans and democrats from both the house and senate, involved in those negotiations. And as of right now, a surprising number of open issues. You know, at least a half dozen fairly from very big to somewhat big open issues that theyre still trying to nail down. And its one of these situations whereas the leadership says until everyt i