A Strong Future for American Wood
Rep. Bruce Westerman (AR-04)
From seed to sawmill, our trees play an integral role in our daily lives. In the ground, they provide clean air, clean water, and better ecosystems for our wildlife. After they’re processed through the sawmill, we see them put to use in everyday products from the furniture in our homes to the paper towels in our kitchens and the boxes our deliveries come in.
This week, we recognize National Forest Products Week and celebrate the economic, environmental, and social impact of this vital industry. As one of our state’s leading economic drivers, we depend heavily on a strong pulp and paper and wood products market. Unfortunately, our forest products industry is deteriorating quickly before our eyes. With pressure from static market conditions, subsidized foreign goods, and an overly burdensome domestic regulatory environment leading to mill closures nation-wide, we are at a tipping point for our nation’s – and state’s – forestry industry.
What’s more, a strong forest products industry and healthy forests go hand-in-hand: when we support our domestic wood product markets, we’re also keeping our forests strong and healthy. Mill closures, reduced production, job loss, and declining investment create a ripple effect, impacting the trees still rooted deeply in the ground by putting their health at risk and priming them as tinderboxes for devastating wildfire.
To address the issues impacting our forest product markets and our forest health, I was proud to introduce the Strong American Wood (SAW) Act this week. This bill works to enhance the demand for American-grown wood and supports the domestic and pulp and paper product markets by promoting new markets through research and innovation, enacting fair trade policy, and clearing regulatory hurdles.
The SAW Act approaches this issue in three ways. It strengthens demand for American wood by incentivizing home building using domestic lumber and creating new markets for woody biomass. It levels the playing field for trade by ensuring foreign imports aren’t undermining our national security and threatening domestic markets. And it clears the regulatory hurdles hamstringing our mills while also ensuring the federal government is supporting American forests, not foreign ones, by allowing only domestic lumber when wood is used in federal buildings.
It’s almost unbelievable that the United States is the world’s largest importer of wood and paper products, while we have more trees now than we did in 1900. With mills across the country continuing to close and our forests going up in smoke, we’ve been exporting American jobs while leaving one of our most abundant natural resources out to dry. The SAW Act would work to revitalize demand for American wood, put our mills back to work, and create more incentive for our landowners to manage their forests.
At the same time, the United States is more than 4 million homes behind in housing construction. And when homes aren’t being built, there’s a diminished demand for lumber, further driving our mills to close and leading to related infrastructure loss. This sets the stage for future supply shortages, higher costs, and an even greater dependence on imports.
Arkansas’ forest products industry is responsible for over $7 billion of our state’s GDP, which means our rural communities and the state as a whole cannot afford to lose any more mills or jobs they support. The SAW Actinvests in innovative markets for our wood products so that low-value wood and residual timber can be put to use – allowing landowners and producers to expand their operations and improve forest health, reducing the risk of wildfire.
The bottom line is, if we want to see more trees and healthier forests, we must be investing in the products made from them. This National Forest Products Week, I’m putting pen to paper to ensure we establish a strong future for American wood. With overwhelming support from industry stakeholders, I’m eager to see the SAW Act move swiftly through the legislative process and be signed into law.