U.S. President Donald Trump’s tough on trade softwood tariff is hitting close to home.

“With the tariff coming on it’s going to impact the entire industry and the region,” says sawmill worker Greg Mask, “hopefully they can get things ironed out.”

Mask is one of the 115 employees at the Murray Brothers Lumber Company in Madawaska, on the edge of Algonquin Park in the Upper Ottawa Valley. A company that’s hired generations of workers like Mask, “I’m third generation, I’ve been here 32 years.”

The lumber company, started in 1902, is one of the largest private sector employees in the area, employing many from nearby communities like Barry’s Bay and Wilno.

“Short term we’re not looking at any job cuts but we’re not really sure as to the fallout of this recent trade action,” third generation operator, Ted Murray, told CTV News.

Softwood and hardwood producers, it’s been a rollercoaster ride for the Murray’s for decades, “we’ve had to really roll with the punches.”

In the company’s heyday it employed 300; 60-percent of the business was exporting softwood to the U.S. When the trade disputes started in the early 80’s, the industry took years of hits, and now Murray Brothers workforce has been slashed more than half, just 10-percent of their business is in the U.S.

“We’ve seen this coming for a while, we’ve tried to direct into other markets, the far east, middle east, we’ve tried to focus on the Canadian markets as well,” says Murray.

Even with U.S. softwood sales only a portion of his business, Murray worries President Trump’s softwood tariff, a nearly 20-percent duty, will damage his bottom-line, “we’ve notified our customers that prices are going up 20-percent and we’ll just have to see what the reaction is.”

Murray wants the Canadian government to diversify and focus on residual products like barks and sawdust, “by creating a market for those products locally they can go a long way to ensuring the forest products industry is healthy going forward.”

As for Greg Mask he’s worried about his livelihood, “any little impact to the industry hurts us. My boss Ted Murray works hard trying to establish sales all over the world, without those we’d be down already.”

“It’s a trade thing,” Mask adds, “its politics, hopefully it will work out.”