Complete Story
01/18/2018
Trade dispute results in tariffs, higher costs for newsprint
Editor's Note: The ONMA has “ghost-written” an editorial to help you put the issue in front of your readers. Use as you see fit. You can download it by clicking here. (Thanks to the PA Newsmedia Association for allowing us to Ohio-ize their column.)
A petition by a single paper maker in Washington state has resulted in a preliminary decision by the U.S. Department of Commerce to levy tariffs on imports of Canadian newsprint and other paper products — including paper used by The Dispatch.
The Commerce Department decision, which will result in the import tax being applied to those paper products starting on Tuesday, will increase paper costs for most newspapers in the U.S. The tariffs vary among the half-dozen affected manufacturers and would increase costs for The Dispatch and all GateHouse Ohio newspapers by almost 10 percent.
The two biggest costs in a newspaper operation are payroll and paper. The Dispatch spends millions of dollars a year on paper, and an increase of almost 10 percent amounts to hundreds of thousands more in production costs.
“If this decision is allowed to stand, it will result in significant long-term cost increases for our company,” said Bradley M. Harmon, president of the GateHouse Media Central U.S. Publishing Operations and publisher of The Columbus Dispatch. “On behalf of our employees and our customers, we join with others in the newspaper industry to urge the Commerce Department to reconsider this decision, and barring that, for lawmakers to take action to override the decision.”
Industry representatives had urged Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to reject the petition by the North Pacific Paper Company, or NORPAC, to investigate Canadian imports of “uncoated groundwood paper,” the grade of paper widely used by newspapers and other commercial publishers.
