China Responds with Lumber Ban Amid Trade Dispute

As the Trump administration imposed new tariffs on China, that country responded on March 4 with a ban on imports of U.S. lumber and saw logs, according to Reuters, the international news service.

The Chinese announcement blamed the presence of invasive insects on U.S. logs. Still, the timing of the ban, coincidental with U.S. imposition of increased tariffs on import of Chinese goods to the U.S., fit a previous pattern of trade retaliation.

One log exporter expressed concern about the fate of a shipment of oak logs in transit from the East coast to China when the ban went into effect. He was moving to sell the logs in Vietnam as a replacement market, possibly.