Australia imports more than ten times more timber from the United States than it exports, meaning a 10% reciprocal tariff on all American hardwood and softwood entering Australian supply chains would likely have a far greater impact on the Australian building and construction industry than on the American supply chain for building materials.
That is according to new data provided by the FWPA Data Dashboard—Australia’s forest and wood industry services company —which revealed that, on average, Australia imported $130 million in joinery, carpentry wood, plywood, and veneer every year from 2015 to 2024.
However, whilst Australia imports far more timber than it exports -trading in $93 million in 2024 (4% of all imports) and trading out $8 million (0.5% of all exports): “The US import trend has (actually) been declining over the last ten years, with the proportion of US imports out of all imports dropping from 7% in 2015 to 4% in 2024,” according to the FWPA Statistics and Economics Team. “Overall, the Australian trade balance of logs and wood products with the US has consistently shown a deficit over the past ten years, although this trend is declining from approximately $137 million in 2015 to around $85 million in 2024.”
The new data comes after Wood Central reported last month that Australia’s reliance on American wood and wood-based products was steadily declining—from a peak of $160m in 2018—with the vast majority of Australian imports now coming from China ($1.115b—or 42% of total imports), Indonesia ($276.4m or 10.4% of imports), New Zealand ($260.9m or 9.8%), and Malaysia ($175.5m or 6.6%).
Reciprocal tariffs could hit the Australian wine industry.
In February, Wood Central reported that huge volumes of American White oak are used in the Australian wine industry, with American oak favoured over French oak in wine barrels for stronger and fleshier wines: “Australia buys a lot of lumber to turn into various aging products like tank staves,” according to Rod Wiles, the American Hardwood Export Council’s Regional Director for Africa, the Middle East, India and Oceania, who said “that up to a third of White oak imports could be tied up in the industry.”
And the wine trade is just one of a growing number of industries that now rely on American hardwoods: “What we have seen over the last year or two years is a really big jump in the exports of Red oak lumber imported into Australia in response to the gap in the local supply of hardwoods.”
As it stands, Australia produces more than 1.2 billion litres of wine every year, with just under 40% (or 457 million litres) consumed locally and the balance (743 million litres) exported to all corners of the world – where Australia has long garnered a reputation as one of the best wine producers.
- To learn more about the impact of Trump’s tariffs on the vast majority of timber products, click here for Wood Central’s special feature from last month.
