Trump’s Canadian tariffs include lumber. He is pushing to cut down American trees instead.

By Laura Paddison, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump is promising to unleash the US timber industry by allowing companies to raze swaths of federally protected national forests.

The Trump administration quietly issued an executive order Saturday for the “immediate expansion” of commercial logging on federal lands, setting out deadlines for officials to figure out how to fast-track permits and circumvent restrictions set out in the Endangered Species Act and other environmental protections.

The order — which calls for the ramping up of the domestic timber production to avoid reliance on “foreign producers” — was followed three days later by sweeping 25% tariffs on Canadian products, including lumber.

The United States has an “abundance of timber resources that are more than adequate to meet our domestic timber production needs,” the executive order says.

However, it’s more complex than simply swapping out Canadian imports for homegrown timber, said industry experts, who warned tariffs could end up increasing lumber and building costs — and even push up housing prices for consumers.

Meanwhile, environmental groups say clearcutting national forests will pollute the air and water, endanger wildlife and exacerbate climate change. “Trump’s order will unleash the chainsaws and bulldozers on our beautiful, irreplaceable federal forests,” said Randi Spivak, public lands policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

The US relies heavily on Canada for its lumber. Last year 23.6% of the lumber consumed in the US was shipped in from its northern neighbor, according to Forest Economic Advisors.

Anna Kelly, White House deputy press secretary, said Trump’s executive order addresses “the national security threat posed by an overreliance on foreign timber and lumber, while simultaneously increasing America’s lumber supply at home.”

She referred to multiple organizations that have released statements of support about opening up federal land for logging, including the American Loggers Council, the American Forest Resource Council and the Forest Landowners Association.

Increasing logging on federal lands would increase the supply of logs for US industry, said Rocky Goodnow, vice president of North American Timber Service at Forest Economic Advisors. But it won’t replace Canadian imports in the near term, he told CNN.

That’s because it takes time to expand an industry. The US needs to build more sawmills to produce the lumber, as well as develop the labor force in rural areas and increase logging capacity, Goodnow said.

In the meantime, prices are already going up, said Buddy Hughes, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders.

While he welcomed “efforts to eliminate barriers to domestic lumber production,” he said a lack of sawmill capacity means “any move in the short-term to add tariffs or hinder the flow of lumber from Canada will only harm housing affordability.”

Any more tariffs or restrictions could further increase the cost of construction and discourage new development, he told CNN. “Consumers end up paying for the tariffs in the form of higher home prices,” he added.

The NAHB’s chief economist Robert Dietz said he was hearing anecdotally from builders that the new tariffs could increase costs anywhere from $7,500 to $10,000 per home.

For environmental advocates, the plan to open up federal land for logging is fraught with risk.

Trump’s executive order says federal restrictions on logging have “contributed to wildfire disasters (and) degraded fish and wildlife habitats,” but the environmental law group Earthjustice said cutting down trees releases planet-heating pollution, exacerbating the climate crisis.

“Hotter temperatures caused by climate change, in turn, create dry forest conditions that are more susceptible to fire,” said a spokesperson for Earthjustice. In addition, the debris often left behind by the logging industry, including needles and leaves, “essentially acts as tinder,” they added.

Spivak of the Center for Biological Diversity said logging on public lands risks polluting water and threatens the more than 400 species protected under the Endangered Species Act that rely on national forests, including grizzly bears, spotted owls and wild salmon.

“This is a particularly horrific move by Trump to loot our public lands by handing the keys to the kingdom over to big business,” Spivak said.

Earthjustice — which sued the government over its attempts to approve a huge logging program in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska during Trump’s first term — said it plans to closely monitor what the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management do in response to the order.

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