At the outset, it seems difficult to identify national security threats stemming from the established import system that have not already been accounted for by existing trade protections. The perceived risk seems be the potential for disruption of the supply chain, which may be increasingly problematic if the administration isolates the United States from its trade allies, and general impacts of imports on the domestic wood product industry. President Trump has toyed with the imposition of a 25 percent tariff on lumber and wood products, which would stack on top of existing 14.54 percent anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties that are already placed on Canadian softwood imports. Anti-dumping duties are placed on foreign entities that sell their products in the U.S. market at less than fair value, i.e., below the cost of production or their price in the home foreign market. Countervailing duties (or anti-subsidy duties) are placed on foreign entities receiving monetary aid from their governments where this benefits foreign goods production and export in ways out of alignment with market conditions. These duties aim to prevent unfair trade practices, mitigating price discrimination and subsidies which could otherwise disrupt the U.S. market and put domestic forest product producers at a disadvantage.
Where financial viability of domestic industry could be at risk if it cannot compete with the “artificially” low prices of imports, tariffs offset the disparity. A material injury to the domestic market must typically be shown to allow anti-dumping tariffs, and they are generally limited to what is functionally the difference in price between the import and domestic product, known as the “margin” of dumping. However, the administration’s threats to add tariffs in excess of this margin prior to receipt of the secretary’s report will likely strain the United States’ relationship with Canada that is already increasingly fraught with political tension. Canada is the dominant supplier of lumber and forest product imports to the United States, with an import value of over $20 billion dollars in 2023, highlighting the significance of the investigation and extra tariffs. Both the president and nation await the secretary’s report, which is not due until November 2025. If the Department finds that forest product imports are indeed posing risks to national security, President Trump can impose tariffs or quotas unlimited in duration to address the situation.
This national security risk probe comes coupled with a hulking second executive order signed the same day––EO 14225: Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production. This order aims to streamline and promote domestic timber production by swatting away “onerous” federal policies via issuing directives to the secretaries of interior and agriculture, paring down permitting processes, and utilizing the Endangered Species Act’s (ESA) emergency consultation regulations. The directives to the Secretaries are comprised of series of deadlines to complete tasks including, inter alia, providing guidance for increased timber production and forest management, increasing the speed of forestry project approval involving section 7 of the ESA, setting timber targets, and increasing the available number of categorical exclusions (CEs) for timber actions.
While any of these actions could significantly impact U.S. forests, the push for categorical exclusions is of particular concern. The ability to adopt other agencies’ CEs is a relatively new authority granted in the amendments to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) from the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, creating NEPA section 109. The Forest Service has utilized this authority to adopt a variety of CEs from many other agencies, most recently including Department of Energy CEs relating to pipelines this March, and it may be an easy vehicle to quickly amass exclusions under an administration geared toward avoiding the “delays” associated with environmental impact review. This occurs within a new NEPA landscape where Council on Environmental Quality regulations are no longer binding, potentially opening the door for actions such as adoption of agency-specific whittled definitions, or bright-line thresholds for “significance,” which could allow for more CEs and generalized permits. The EO’s permitting section primarily tasks agencies with ridding the system of all delays by revising, suspending, or rescinding a host of permit-related items, ranging from guidance documents to regulations and “other agency actions.” This command is so sweeping in nature it is hard to know how many or which aspects of permitting processes could fall victim to its streamlining.
The final move by the administration to ensure that federal policy doesn’t impede expanding domestic logging is the resurrection of the “God Squad,” officially known as the Endangered Species Committee, which has the authority to exempt agency actions from section 7 requirements under the ESA. Created by the 1978 amendments to the ESA, the Committee has only convened three times. Now however, under Executive Order 14156: Declaring a National Energy Emergency, President Trump has ordered the Committee to convene at least quarterly even when there are no pending applications to review––a potentially ominous indicator that the God Squad could play some greater role in attempting to bend the ESA to the administration’s will.
As one order endeavors to reduce import of forest products to defend national security and the other simultaneously plans to expedite and ramp up the domestic timber production, the effects of this one-two punch are likely to be felt across the board. Both the overt negative environmental impacts of aggressive federal logging and lumber tariffs’ potential effects on homebuilders and buyers raise concerns, with the debate transcending the typical “industry versus environment” narrative. Some nonprofit forest groups, such as the Allegheny Forest Alliance, indicate that they are pleased with the logging EOs, whereas some business are standing firmly against parts of them. One business association advocacy group submitted a comment letter in strong opposition to the section 232 investigation and potential tariffs, outlining the harms that could result, such as a significant increase in home construction costs. The group pointed out that the choice to include derivative products could have a larger economic impact, as the manufacturing process typically involves cooperative production with fiber mills outside the country, for which there are no domestic replacements prepared to handle the work. The United States cannot abruptly change long established supply chains overnight without significant preparation; business thrives in well-organized schemes.
Further, the administration has cut federal jobs while overloading agencies with intensive work tasks, such as creating their own NEPA regulations, begging the question of how a dramatic increase in domestic timber production on federal lands can be efficiently handled with a drastically reduced federal workforce. Allowing agency-specific regulatory replacements may create a non-cohesive regulatory patchwork that could be a source of future litigation and may confound permit seekers, ultimately resulting in delays.
Perhaps the most direct and key concern for those who would desire aggressive domestic logging in federal forests is how the country intends to handle this sudden increase without sufficient wood processing infrastructure to support it. The financial and temporal cost of building new mills and hiring the labor force needed to bring this plan to fruition could end up frustrating the administration’s goal of fast-tracking domestic logging.
Under attack from multiple angles, it appears that prized federal forest lands will be the sacrificial lamb in the administration’s quest to promote domestic logging and reduce reliance on foreign forest products.
