We used to be about 20 percent dependent on foreign wood products, now that figure is closer to 40 percent. The U.S. has a five-year trade deal with Canada, our largest trading partner, imposing certain tariffs on lumber from four provinces if they surpass a 14.7 billion board feet quota. The U.S.-Canadian Softwood Lumber Agreement sunsets next March. In many cases, U.S. companies are forced to look offshore, to South and Central America and Eastern Europe where environmental standards are more lax, for raw material, he said. And there we are, with some of the most productive forests in the world, and we can't touch them.
Environmentalists say West's argument is a huge stretch.
They've created a glut in the market trying to put one another out of business. For them to cry about cheap wood from Canada when it accounts for less than 5 percent of the market share is ridiculous. Holmer, along with Sean Cosgrove, a Sierra Club national forest policy analyst, said restrictions on federal forest harvests can have significant impacts on small mill communities that depend on such harvests, but said they have little impact on a national scale. While the company has undeniably increased clearcutting, it argues that the practice is sustainable and makes sense given the fact that the area has undergone heavy selective logging for decades. They've had a long history, and some of them have been treated pretty poorly and they need to get a forest going again.