Lumber futures have dipped below $550 per thousand board feet—the first time since June 2024—as excess supply from winter restocking and panic buying over Trump’s tariffs collided with a 14.2% drop in US single-family housing starts (down to 940,000 units in March), pushing new home inventories to nearly eight months of supply.
That is according to US-based trading platform Trading Views, which revealed that the 90-day pause on tariffs has removed the near-term urgency for buyers to cover import risks: “At the same time, expectations of sharply higher anti-dumping duties on Canadian lumber have prompted mills to hold back supply, further pressuring prices as domestic inventories accumulate and demand remains subdued despite the onset of the spring building season.”
It comes weeks after Wood Central reported that the vast majority of primary and secondary timber products sidestepped Donald Trump’s tariffs, with huge volumes of rough and surfaced lumber, plywood, MDF, and other wood-based panels now subject to a national security probe that is due for release in a matter of weeks.
In March, lumber prices reached a 30-month high, peaking at $682 per thousand board feet, sparked by a “spooked” North American construction market panic buying in preparation for tariffs. This, in turn, led to on-the-spot prices for spruce-pine-fir (SPF) boards—used to build homes—and southern yellow pine (SYP)—a substitute for SPF in decking—rising to their highest levels in more than a year.
Speaking to the Financial Times, Dustin Jalbert – a senior economist for wood products at Fastmarkets – said that lumber tariffs would exacerbate a US housing industry already constrained by high interest rates and labour shortages—a one-two punch that will worsen with Trump’s crackdown on undocumented migrants: “(Builders) are getting hit from all angles right now.”
- To learn why tariffs on lumber are an existential threat to housing affordability, hitting everything from framing to plywood, OSB, particleboard, fibreboard, shakes, shingles, fixtures and fittings, click here for Wood Central’s special feature last month.
