US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order calling for an increase in volume and speed of domestic timber production to counteract a reliance upon imported lumber.
Issued on 1 March, the Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production calls upon government bodies such as the Bureau of Land Management and the United States Forest Service to deliver reports on how to “reduce unnecessarily lengthy processes and associated costs to administrative approvals” for timber production and forest management in the US.
This is in response to a reliance on imported timber from foreign producers, according to the order.
Trump calls out “reliance on foreign producers”
“The United States has an abundance of timber resources that are more than adequate to meet our domestic timber production needs, but heavy-handed Federal policies have prevented full utilization of these resources and made us reliant on foreign producers,” it said.
“Our inability to fully exploit our domestic timber supply has impeded the creation of jobs and prosperity, contributed to wildfire disasters, degraded fish and wildlife habitats, increased the cost of construction and energy, and threatened our economic security. It is vital that we reverse these policies and increase domestic timber production to protect our national and economic security.”
The order indicates that federal land from the Bureau of Land Management would be used as a resource for this lumber.
Per a 2023 study, the National Association of Home Builders estimated that $13 billion (£10 billion) of $184 billion (£145 billion) worth of goods used in the construction of new multifamily and single-family housing were imported from outside the US.
Much of the small-scale construction such as single-family homes in the United States is still carried out with wood resources.
Of these products, the same study estimates 70 per cent of sawmill and wood product imports came from Canada. The country has long been the largest exporter of wood to the US.
“It’s probably not going to do anything at all”
According to the New York Times, the results of the order would allow Trump to apply tariffs on Canada’s lumber imports.
The increase in wood stock in the architecture and construction industries in the United States is unclear, but there is doubt as to whether the country would be able to process the new resources, if they were available.
Construction consultant firm ResourceWise CEO Pete Stewart told Dezeen the order may “not do anything at all” as replacing the demand of timber production domestically would require building at least 157 new mills, according to Stewart.
“How does it affect those that are in building and architecture? It’s probably not going to do anything at all,” Stewart said. “There’s a vast gulf between ordering the departments to expand their timber supply or make the sales easier to implement, and then actually doing that.”
“There are enough trees in totality, if you took them all, but there’s not enough mill capacity in the US,” he said. “It takes about two years to build a mill, so you’d probably be looking at a 10 year cycle to get them all together. It’s not something that we can just turn the switch on – it takes a long time.”
Stewart did note that the order may benefit the management of federal forests, especially if it required the clearing out fallen or diseased trees, which are often a cause of wildfire.
“What I certainly support is if this leads to starting to open up some of those federal lands that do need thinnings and salvage cuts to improve the health of the forest and reduce the wildfire risk,” he said.
The order comes at a time when architects and urbanists have been advocating for using engineered wood, called mass-timber, to reduce the use of carbon-intensive materials such as concrete.
Trump’s administration’s actions since taking office in January have touched on issues close to the architecture and design industries. For example, it recently issued an executive order to promote “beautiful federal civic architecture” and another to ban paper straws for plastic.
The photography is by the Bureau of Land Management California
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