Donald Trump has signed an executive order to “free up” millions of hectares of United States forests for lumber production – coming days after President Trump vowed to impose a 25% tariff on global lumber and other forest products starting April 2nd.
The new order reverses an order from Joe Biden – who pledged to protect old-growth forests from logging – and comes just weeks after newly appointed Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins pledged to increase timber output in federally controlled forests.
“We’re so restricted environmentally… We have more forests than almost anybody. We don’t need anybody’s trees. We don’t need trees from Canada or anybody else,” President Trump said.
The United States is the world’s largest producer of pulp, paper, and lumber but also the second-largest consumer of timber (behind China), leaning on 30% of Canadian lumber to meet domestic demand. However, after decades of restrictions, wildfires and infestation, that reliance is waning with the American South, for the first time since 1970, surpassing Canada as the dominant producer of North American lumber.
Wood Central understands the new order will likely impact millions of hectares of forests overseen by the US Forest Service – managed by the Department of Agriculture – and Bureau of Land Management – which falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interiors.
Last year, a forest survey found that the US Forest Service manages more than 144 million (58 million hectares) of forests – with its inventory revealing that 80% of forests were either old-growth or mature – with 32 million acres (12 million hectares) old-growth and 80 million (32 million hectares) mature forests.
- To read more about Trump’s policy for US forestry, click here for Wood Central’s special feature on Brooke Rollins’s confirmation as the new Secretary for Agriculture.
