The Financial Post reports in its Wednesday edition that the softwood dispute with the United States may not be hurting Canada much yet, but the industry is bracing for a new trade battle over newsprint. A Canadian Press dispatch to the Post says that the U.S. government has been investigating Canada's newsprint industry since the end of August, after Washington State-based North Pacific Paper Co. complained that Canada was dumping newsprint and unfairly subsidizing its industry at home. It is the same argument made by the U.S. Lumber Coalition about Canada's softwood industry, which led to the imposition of both countervailing and anti-dumping duties on most softwood exports to the United States. The preliminary newsprint decision was initially due by Jan. 16 but has been postponed until March at the request of North Pacific Paper. About 25 lumber mills in Canada would be hurt by duties, most of them in Ontario and Quebec. U.S. Commerce says Canadian companies exported about $1.6-billion worth of newsprint to the United States in 2016, but media newsprint sales are declining by about 10 per cent a year. Over 1,000 newspapers in the U.S. have asked their federal government not to enact duties.