Reports have surfaced nationwide of businesses dealing with the cost or uncertainty of reciprocal tariffs and the ever-changing worldwide trade war the Trump administration has embroiled the United States in.

One regional company, Northwest Forest Link Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Coast Enterprise Ltd., headquartered in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, was recently forced to park $250,000 worth of wood products, primarily used in construction, bound for China at the Port of Grays Harbor for two months.

On March 4, the United States Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Services reported that, “the General Administration of Customs of China (GACC) announced it was suspending processing imports of U.S. logs. GACC stated that these suspensions were in response to recent detections of forest pests such as bark beetles and longhorn beetles in U.S. shipments. In 2024 China reported imports of U.S. hardwood and softwood logs valued at $612 million and $237 million respectively.”

Although China cited pests as justification for a ban on all round log imports from the United States, John McDougall, a wood products import/export specialist with Tacoma-based Northwest Forest Link, said China’s actions are part of the trade war.

“The ban on round logs came out of the Chinese Customs and Quarantine Bureau. They cited scientific reasons for banning round logs from the United States,” McDougall said. “They identified a couple of specific insects, pests that they said were present in some shipments from the United States. This tactic has been used by the Chinese many times in many countries in the past, so it can be interpreted as a direct relation to the trade war. We saw this happen a couple years ago. Australia and China were in a similar trade war type of argument, and the Chinese government did exactly the same thing to Australian round logs. They were banned for a couple of years. Once they settled their trade dispute, all of a sudden the next day round logs were acceptable again.”

According to McDougall, Northwest Forest Link has been drastically impacted by China’s ban on imported round logs, many of which are harvested in Grays Harbor, Jefferson and Lewis counties, and has forced the company to look into other markets.

“China as a destination for our product was probably on average maybe 75 to 85% of our business, depending on the time of year, so quite significantly,” McDougall said. “Now we have identified other countries to diversify our business into which we had been working on early last year anyway. It’s the nature of the log trading business, but it’s hurt significantly, no doubt.”

Wood products are not the only agricultural exports to China that have been affected. According to a Reuters report, “China suspended the soybean import licences of three U.S. firms and halted imports of U.S. logs, stepping up its retaliation for additional U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods. China also imposed import levies covering $21 billion worth of U.S. agricultural and food products including soybeans, wheat, meat and cotton.”

The suspension of soybean licenses does not affect Port of Grays Harbor partner Ag Processing, Inc., because AGP does not export to China. According to a Port of Grays Harbor spokesperson, the tariffs have yet to affect any of the Port’s customers.

McDougall went on to say that the inventory that was bound for China has found a new home.

“We sold all of what we had available to us back to the domestic market. We did that because logs are a perishable commodity,” McDougall said. “It’s impossible to guesstimate as to when this ban will end and it doesn’t do any good to let good money sit there without any understanding of where it’s going to go.”

Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported “The United States and China agreed to roll back most of the tariffs each nation had imposed on the other and declared a 90-day truce in their trade war. The Trump administration said it would reduce the 145% duties it had imposed on imports from China to 30%, while China said it would cut its 125% tariffs on U.S. goods to 10%. Some of the U.S. tariffs — 24 percentage points — will be delayed for 90 days, while the rest have been removed.”

Despite this truce, it is unclear if and when the ban on imported logs will be lifted.