Timber and lumber will hold their 10 per cent tariff on imports into the United States from every trading partner, even as new Section 301 duties of 10 to 12.5 per cent cover most goods from 60 economies, and the American sawmilling base on which those tariffs are built keeps shrinking. That is according to the final action published by the United States Trade Representative, which excludes goods already taxed under Section 232, alongside Federal Reserve production data showing US sawmill capacity down 6 per cent in a year.
The exclusion completes a fortnight in which wood was written out of every new American tariff, after Donald Trump’s Section 338 proclamations spared lumber from the 50 per cent duties on US$20 billion of Canadian goods, while 98 forest-product tariff lines were caught in the same orders. Friday’s action extends that logic worldwide, with the Section 122 surcharge of 10 per cent on all countries expiring the same minute the new duties took effect.
Washington’s switch follows the Supreme Court’s five-month-old ruling that the emergency powers behind the original tariffs could not tax imports at all, pushing the administration onto the older trade statute. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has described the new duties as enforcement of a forced-labour import ban the United States has carried on its books for nearly a century, with a grace window for cargo already on the water closing today, US time.
The rate a country pays turns on its own record, with 17, including the United Kingdom, India, Mexico, and Canada, held to a flat 10 per cent, and the European Union and Taiwan lifted only as far as that same line. Japan and South Korea pay 12.5 per cent, with the remaining 38 per cent from China and Brazil, while Vietnam and New Zealand pay the flat 12.5 per cent; qualifying Canadian and Mexican goods entering duty-free under the USMCA escape the new duty altogether.
American sawmills are losing capacity behind their own wall, with the Federal Reserve’s industrial production figures recording a second consecutive quarterly fall in output and the National Association of Home Builders estimating full production capacity dropped 6.0 per cent over the year. Output has barely moved since 2023 on the same data, even with production running 1.7 per cent ahead of a year earlier on a four-quarter average.
Those figures test the case the US Lumber Coalition ran last week, arguing that trade enforcement has cut Canada’s share of the American market from 35 per cent to an average of 19 per cent and that the tariff will build the domestic industry to fill the space. Softwood prices did the filling instead in the first quarter, climbing 6.1 per cent on the previous three months while sitting 3.8 per cent below a year earlier.
Furniture is where the wood trade still pays, with wooden pieces outside the upholstered and cabinet categories taking the full new duty. Chinese product stacks the 12.5 per cent onto an existing 25 per cent Section 301 rate, and Vietnamese factories, the biggest suppliers of wooden furniture to American homes, are repriced overnight.
Advice has already moved through the New Zealand industry, with the Wood Processors and Manufacturers Association confirming to its members that the country’s timber and lumber will not face the new duty. “We need to be ready to expect the unexpected,” Mark Ross, WPMA chief executive, said when the Section 232 investigation began, with the 10 per cent rate that probe settled now shielding a US trade the association valued at more than $370 million a year.
The gap between suppliers is what the exemption leaves standing, with radiata and European spruce clearing customs at 10 per cent while Canadian softwood carries an effective 34.83 per cent under stacked antidumping, countervailing, and Section 232 measures. On the Federal Reserve’s own figures, the wall is now complete: a 10 per cent floor under the world’s wood, a 12.5 per cent ceiling over most of everything else, and an American sawmilling base carrying 6 per cent less capacity than a year ago.
