The US had a good case against Canadian softwood lumber, we were violating NAFTA when provincial governments set stumpage fees that were not subject to market demand, and were lower than market-based fees elsewhere. They argued, convincingly, that this qualifies as an unfair government subsidy to the industry. Much of the legal fighting was about whether the retaliatory tariffs were at appropriate levels (the media heralded some of these as wins for Canadian industry, when really the rulings were saying 'tariffs are fair, but these ones are too high').

Beef was different. There were legitimate concerns about the spread of BSE, a threat to human health, although there were reasonableness questions to the restrictions there also.