Less than a week since United States President-elect Donald Trump became the 45th and 47th president, new data has revealed the huge volumes of logs traded between the world’s largest economies.
As it stands, China accounts for just under 40% of all American hardwoods and softwoods (38%) traded from US shores for the year to September (about 1.92 million cubic metres), ahead of Canada (31%), Japan (17%), India (5%) and Vietnam (4.4%).
“Softwood logs comprised 70% of total exports, totalling 2.78 million cubic metres,” said Russian-based Lesproom Analytics, with “hardwood logs followed with 29.4% of the total market, or about 1,165 thousand cubic metres,” and tropical logs making up just 0.3% of the volume.
Last week, Wood Central revealed that Donald Trump’s tariffs—including a flat 10% tariff on all goods traded into the United States and a 60% to 100% tariff on all Chinese goods—could spell trouble for the global timber market. Speaking to the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, downloaded more than 48 million times on YouTube, President Trump has doubled down on his pledge to impose tariffs:
“Because, we, really, our country was the richest in the world, relatively, in the 1880s and 1890s. A president named McKinley, who was assassinated, was the tariff king. He spoke beautifully of tariffs,” Trump said.
“And then around in the early 1900s, they switched over stupidly to frankly an income tax. And you know why? Because countries were putting a lot of pressure on America: ‘We don’t want to pay tariffs, please don’t.’ You know they, believe me, they control our politicians.”
Donald Trump on his plans to introduce universal tariffs on all products entering the United States
As it stands, the US is the world’s largest producer of forest products, has the highest per capita consumption of industrial wood, and is the second-largest consumer market (behind China) for lumber, engineered wood products, paper, and wood energy. In addition, it has the largest stake in the USMCA – the world’s largest free trade zone, which includes Canada (the world’s fourth-largest lumber and pulp producer) and Mexico (one of the world’s fastest-growing lumber consumption markets.)
To date, more than US $10 billion worth of timber is traded between the United States and China annually, rocketing from US $7 billion a year over the past decade.
“The Chinese and the US forest markets are closely linked, according to a Chinese study looking at the impact of a trade war on the global supply chain of forest products. “The main forest products imported by the US from China are plywood, fiberboard, and wooden furniture, accounting for 46.68%, 33.31%, and 50.33% of US total imports.”
“On the other hand, China’s main imports of forest products are industrial roundwood, sawn wood, and waste paper, accounting for 42.93%, 42.27%, and 71.12% of the total US exports of these products,” they said, adding that “these imported products also amounted for 10.25%, 18.09%, and 46.01% of the total Chinese imports.”
- To learn more about Trump’s plan to impose tariffs on all goods imported into the United States – and its potential to create a trade war, click here.
