Section 232 Investigation Begins on Lumber, Cabinets, Paper, Furniture

March 3, 2025

President Donald Trump directed the Commerce Department to investigate whether the importation of lumber, wooden cabinets, wooden furniture and paper pose a threat to national security under Section 232.

The executive order said that the manufacturing of all the products made from wood, and the processing of timber into lumber “is a critical manufacturing industry essential to the national security, economic strength, and industrial resilience of the United States.”

The executive order argued that the military spends more than $10 billion annually on construction, and wood is a key input to that building.

“The United States has ample timber resources. The current United States softwood lumber industry has the practical production capacity to supply 95 percent of the United States’ 2024 softwood consumption. Yet, since 2016 the United States has been a net importer of lumber,” the order said.

That year is when managed trade with Canada in softwood lumber, through a trade remedies suspension agreement, expired, and U.S. antidumping and countervailing duties resumed effect.

The Commerce Department is directed to study the current demand for timber and lumber, and how it might change, what proportion of that demand could be met by domestic production, and the role of major exporters in the timber and lumber sector.

They are to study “the impact of foreign government subsidies and predatory trade practices on United States timber, lumber, and derivative product industry competitiveness,” the feasibility of increasing domestic production, and whether tariffs or quotas are necessary to protect national security.

The U.S. Lumber Coalition hailed the study, saying that subsidized Canadian lumber harms U.S. companies and workers.

In response to the higher AD rate, the same group’s chair said: “The higher preliminary duty level announced by the Commerce Department demonstrates the severity of dumping and frankly disgraceful behavior by Canadian exporters in the U.S. market.”

The American Forest and Paper Association, which represents paper mills, disagreed. When the 25% tariffs on Canadian goods over fentanyl and migration seemed imminent in February, the group said, “These tariffs have the potential to seriously disrupt the U.S. forest products industry’s complex, cross-border supply chains that employ more than 900,000 people.”

They said two-way trade for pulp and paper products with Canada in 2024 was more than $14 billion and total two-way trade with Mexico was more than $5 billion that year.

The Canadian government didn’t issue a statement on the Section 232 action, though the leader of British Columbia said it will only serve to raise prices for homebuilders in the U.S.

Unifor, Canada’s equivalent of the AFL-CIO, did respond. “To suggest our lumber and byproducts are a threat to American security is ludicrous, but Trump is going back to his playbook to twist regulations and continue sustained attacks on the Canadian softwood industry and the jobs that depend on it,” Unifor National President Lana Payne said.

Unifor’s Quebec director said Trump hopes to put the Canadian forestry sector out of business.

Unifor Quebec Director Daniel Cloutier said, “The reality is the U.S. needs to import lumber, and tariffs will further drive-up prices on American consumers, particularly home-buyers.”

The Forest Resources Association of Canada said U.S. imports of softwood lumber have declined from 35% of U.S. consumption at the end of 2016 to 24% in 2024, and that the level of tariff and the cost of lumber in the market doesn’t seem to directly affect the volumes.

“This decline in Canadian lumber imports would have persisted even in the absence of tariffs, due to evolving forest management policies in Canada and a scarcity of economically viable log supplies,” a December opinion essay on the group’s website argued.

Reproduced by permission of International Trade Today, internationaltradetoday.com, Copyright © 2025 by Warren Communications News, Inc.