Comment from Paul de Grijs, DG International Inc.

I have been exporting lumber and wood products long enough, that I can remember a time when our federal government actively encouraged export because export earnings were deemed desirable. Because of that policy our government agreed to provide Export Certfication free of charge to the exporters. In an effort to make government more efficient user fees were introduced, reversing the previous policy. Since that time we have seen ever groing trade deficits. While most of our trade partners, like Germany, Japan and the PRC, are actively subsidizing exports, our government decided to discourage American export and now seem poised to raise these levies by a staggering 100 to 150%. Please do all you can to defeat any proposed legislation that is intended to increase the Export Certification fees; if anything, we need to eliminate these fees all together and return to a policy of actively encouraging exports! Please help us shrink the Trade Deficit.