Washington's timber industry buffeted by regulations, trade war

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): Countless logging trucks rumbled through timber country, their drivers headed toward Hampton Lumber's sawmill in Morton. Low-hanging clouds touched the tops of the rolling foothills, with patches of land bald from timber harvesting.

"We take our logs and get every bit out of it that we possibly can. And we replant, and we grow the forest back again," said plant superintendent Tony Gillispie, as machinery whirred throughout the sawmill on a March afternoon. "We want this to last for hundreds of years."

But will Washington's timber industry overcome its ongoing slump and endure for centuries? Myriad issues are at play, with fingers pointing in every direction.

The private sector, which harvests the majority of Washington's wood, feels squeezed by policies restricting its access to state trust lands in the fight against climate change. Major employers are eyeing the American South for what they consider business-friendly climates.

Meanwhile, the state government points to the residual effects of trade wars, particularly with China, after Washington's exports of forest products hit a 21-year low in 2025. Local demand for lumber has also dropped in line with the recent slowdown in construction activity across the state.

"The U.S. market is depressed. The export market kind of went away," said Kent Wheiler, director of the Center for International Trade in Forest Products at the University of Washington. "A combination of all those things are making it a really tough time right now for people in the forest products industry."

The threat of private landowners throwing in the towel on forest management and mills closing up shop looms.

"If we don't provide an economic incentive to manage the forest properly, people will convert it to parking lots," Wheiler said.

Worries over 'biggest step forward'

Wood is big business for Washington.

The state has around 23 million acres of forestland.

While 53% of it is restricted forests that cannot be harvested, 47% is working forests, which are managed to produce the commercial wood supply, according to trade association Washington Forest Protection Association. 

Several parties — private landowners, the state government, the federal government and the tribes — handle the local timber harvest.

Since 2000, private and state players have delivered the bulk of the Washington timber harvest. Currently, the Washington State Department of Natural Resources makes up 20% to 25% of the state's lumber market, said Duane Emmons, the agency's assistant deputy for state uplands.

However, the timber harvest has suffered a steady decline in recent decades, and it's nowhere near the heyday of the last century.

That spells trouble for private companies — and they're placing blame on the government.

"The single biggest challenge facing Washington’s timber industry is the continued restriction of timber supply, driven by policy and management decisions," said Kristin Rasmussen, director of public affairs and communications at Hampton Lumber. The family-owned forest products company was founded in 1942 in the Pacific Northwest, with three Washington locations.

DNR is in charge of over 2 million acres of forested trust lands. These lands are meant to generate revenue for schools, counties and other public services through timber harvests and agricultural land leases, according to the agency.

But Rasmussen argued a recent move by the state government that limited access to that forestland has worsened instability for the industry.

In August, Dave Upthegrove, the state's commissioner of public lands, announced the decision to set aside 77,000 acres of older state-owned forests, including more than 10,000 acres managed for timber, to prevent climate change.

“This is the biggest step forward in forest conservation in our state in a generation,” Upthegrove said. “It will enable us to nurture and steward these forests in innovative, diverse ways to do more for our climate, for habitat and for the communities we serve.”

Because older forests store carbon, the commissioner aims to sell carbon credits and buy replacement timber lands, per the August news release.

Conservationists, like nonprofit Washington Conservation Action, celebrated the effort. "This is a big win for people and for nature," CEO Alyssa Macy said in a statement at the time.

However, the private industry condemned it.

"You can't do that when you're a fiduciary manager of state and county trust lands," said Cindy Mitchell, senior director of public affairs at the Washington Forest Protection Association, a trade group that represents private forest landowners.

Other small changes tied to natural disturbances like wildfires and environmental actions have pared down the annual harvest over time.

“There have been a number of small restrictions,” UW’s Wheiler said, “but it’s the cumulative effect of all those things that end up having a reduction in available timber.”

With the shifting landscape, some companies are eyeing expansion outside Washington — and into the South. The region "is picking up a lot of steam" in the timber industry, DNR's Emmons said.

Hampton Lumber announced in June that it will build its first southern sawmill in South Carolina.

Local policy and management issues "make it increasingly difficult to justify that kind of investment in Washington today," Rasmussen said.

Domestic, foreign markets

Domestic and foreign markets aren't offering much relief to the timber industry.

The domestic market depends heavily on housing starts, said UW’s Wheiler. "The problem we have — and we've had for a while — is that we're just not building houses."

While Washington incentivizes new housing to meet growing needs, roadblocks, such as steep interest rates and climbing manufacturing costs, continue to stifle progress.

In the western U.S., housing starts steadily fell to a low of 300,000 last year from 401,000 in 2021, according to the National Association of Home Builders. That aligns with the gradual plunge in housing starts tracked across the U.S. over the past five years.

Washington can't look overseas for reprieve either.

Last year, the state exported the lowest amount of forest products, at around $542 million, in 21 years, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department.

It's a far cry from the peak of $1.9 billion in 2013.

Washington used to export mainly to Japan, Wheiler said. 

Asia's demand for imported wood is driven by economic growth, as the region's countries use timber for construction, per forest investment manager New Forests.

However, European nations have met much of Japan's needs, Wheiler said, and its government is subsidizing the use of domestic timber.

"We hardly export anything to Japan anymore," Wheiler said.

President Donald Trump's trade wars have also hurt exports. DNR noted the remaining confusion around tariffs.

"Not only are the tariff levels uncertain, but their ultimate effects are uncertain," the agency wrote in its most recent quarterly forecast. "Reciprocal tariffs are being placed by other countries on U.S. timber and lumber, decreasing export demand and leaving more for the domestic market — decreasing prices."

Emmons, at DNR, explained that tariffs affect market players that export raw logs and finished products.

China, a major export market for U.S. forest products, suspended its imports of American logs in March 2025. While the Asian country lifted the ban in November, the impact of the eight-month embargo rippled through American producers.

Seattle-based Weyerhaeuser, the continent's largest private timberlands owner, was in the early stages of reestablishing its log export program in late January, chief financial officer David Wold said in the fourth quarter earnings call.

Weyerhaeuser declined to comment for the story.

The company only expected to deliver one vessel to China in the first quarter of 2026.

Small landowners in Washington may postpone their plans to harvest timber and wait for a recovery, Emmons said.

'Everybody needs a home'

Given the state of the market, some landowners may even consider moving on from the profession.

"Will the next generation keep tree farming?" Mitchell, at the Washington Forest Protection Association, said. "When it becomes too expensive or too hard or too impossible to manage timber, then they look to convert."

The ones in King County experience particular pressure, due to demand for land, Mitchell said.

But mills don't have the option of delaying harvests.

Instead, they require a steady flow of logs to turn into lumber, Rasmussen said, though falling lumber prices can make it hard for a mill to stay competitive.

Plants could close, Rasmussen said, which means suffering for the rural economies that rely on them.

In Centralia, a sawmill owned by NWH, formerly known as Northwest Hardwoods, announced the permanent closure of its facility in March, laying off all 70 employees, according to the worker adjustment and retraining notification.

Employment in the U.S. sawmill and wood preservation sectors continues to slip, with around 85,000 employees — the lowest point since 2013, per the National Association of Home Builders. Over almost two decades, the current downturn is far from the peak of more than 105,000 employees in 2008. 

"In Seattle, you can go down the street and maybe get a different job," Mitchell said. "Not so in these rural communities."

Gillispie, plant superintendent at Hampton Lumber in Morton, has depended on his job at the sawmill since 1982. He started in the cleanup crew and worked his way up the ranks.

"Oh, I have seen so many changes," he said, such as Hampton Lumber's acquisition of the sawmill in 1999.

But some aspects remain the same: steam from the kiln rising above piles of lumber, the buzzing of saws reverberating through the plant, Douglas fir wood chips in nooks and crannies.

Many in the community still rely on the mill for their livelihoods, too.

Most of the plant’s 162 employees are local to Lewis County. Gillispie lives up the road from the plant.

For him, the decadeslong call to cut lumber is as simple as putting roofs over the heads of Washingtonians.

"Everybody needs a home to live in," Gillispie said, “and most of the homes we live in are made of wood.”

Courtesy: www.yakimaherald.com