President Trump on Saturday initiated an investigation into whether imports of lumber threaten America’s national security, a step that is likely to further inflame relations with Canada, the largest exporter of wood to the United States.
The president directed his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, to carry out the investigation. The results of the inquiry could allow the president to apply tariffs to lumber imports. A White House official declined to say how long the inquiry would take.
An executive memorandum signed by Mr. Trump ordered the investigation and was accompanied by another document that White House officials said would expand the volume of lumber offered for sale each year, increasing supply and helping to ensure that timber prices do not rise.
The trade inquiry is likely to further anger Canada. Some of its citizens have called for boycotts of American products over Mr. Trump’s plans to impose tariffs on all Canadian imports beginning on Tuesday. The president, who also plans to hit Mexico with similar tariffs, says the levies are punishment for failure to stem the flow of drugs and migrants into the United States.
Many Canadians have contested Mr. Trump’s assertion that fentanyl is flowing from its country into the United States.
Canada and the United States have sparred over protections in the lumber industry for decades. The countries have protected their own industries with tariffs and other trade measures, and argued about the legitimacy of those measures in disputes both under the North American Free Trade Agreement and at the World Trade Organization.
Canada provided $28 billion of lumber to the United States in 2021 — the most recent year statistics were available from the U.S. International Trade Commission — or nearly half of all U.S. lumber imports. Canada is distantly followed by China, Brazil and Mexico as import sources.
The United States also exported nearly $10 billion of lumber to Canada in 2021, as well as $6.5 billion to Mexico.
White House officials said that lumber was an industry in which the United States should be almost entirely self-sufficient based on its resources, but that American lumber mills had been undermined by cheap imports from bad actors, some of whom were putative allies.
Peter Navarro, the senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, said in a call with reporters Friday that “disastrous” timber and lumber policies “drive up construction and housing costs and impoverish America through large trade deficits that results from exporters like Canada, Germany and Brazil dumping lumber” into the U.S. market.
“That stops today with a pair of Trumpian actions designed to both bolster supply of and demand for American timber and lumber,” he said.
If they are not offset by matching increases in supply, lumber tariffs would likely push up the price of imported wood and raise prices for various industries, particularly construction. The U.S. investigation will include derivative lumber products, like kitchen cabinets.
The investigation is also likely to raise questions and pushback about whether lumber imports really constitute a threat to national security.
The president has also initiated national security investigations into steel, aluminum and copper, but those metals are directly used by the military to make planes, ships and weaponry. Asked about the national security justification, the White House official said that the military was a major consumer of lumber.
Alan Rappeport contributed reporting.