Not long after four major paper and pulp mills closed in Georgia this fall, the phone at the South Georgia Sawmill began ringing nonstop.
Loaded down with logs they could no longer sell, woodsmen from around the state were hoping, begging Adam Williams, the sawmill’s owner, to buy at least some of their logs to mill. A fifth mill had closed earlier in the year, and they were out of options. Given the small size of his family-owned operation in Pembroke, Mr. Williams had to say no.
“They are panicking,” he says. “I had one guy tell me, ‘I’ve been doing this my whole life, and I’m going to hang it up.’”
Why We Wrote This
Georgia is a hub of the U.S. timber industry, yet its mills are closing fast despite some help from new tariffs. Some family-run businesses say the key to survival is innovating and developing new products.
As the nation’s businesses navigate the uncertainties of both America’s trade and technological shifts, Georgia’s wood industry is feeling the strain – despite federal tariff policies aimed at encouraging the production of U.S. goods.
The recent tariffs have been consequential: During his first term, President Donald Trump slapped a duty on Canadian softwood lumber. (Unlike hardwood lumber that comes from slow-growing oak, maple, and hickory trees, softwood lumber comes from coniferous trees, including pine, fir, and cedar. These trees grow quickly, producing wood that is softer, cheaper, and easier to work with than hardwoods.) Then, last month, he did it again, imposing even wider-ranging tariffs on Canadian wood, as well as on kitchen cabinets and upholstered wood products, much of which comes from China and Vietnam.
But demand for U.S. lumber is being driven largely by broader economic trends – posing challenges that are especially deep here in Georgia.
The “Pitch State”
While this Southern coastal state is known as the Peach State, an alternative nickname might be more apt: America’s “Pitch State,” referring to the resin found in the local pine trees. Georgia plants, saws, and chips more timber than any other state in the country.
The state’s significant seedling production – more than 331 million annually – is primarily comprised of various species of pine seedlings, along with some hardwood and ornamental varieties. And in the past five years, Georgia has actually grown 50% more wood than it needs, says Devon Dartnell, chief utilization officer at the Georgia Forestry Commission.
But that forest-industry legacy has been in jeopardy of late. Georgia once had 18 paper mills; it now has eight. Those last five closures cost the state more than $1.7 billion in overall economic impact and $318 million in lost wages, according to the Center Square.
Meanwhile, demand for lumber has decreased from 58 billion board feet to 56 billion board feet since last year, even as housing starts have declined from 1.7 million per year in 2007 to 1.3 million in 2024. Demand for paper products has also fallen by one-third during the same period, as emails and digital documents have replaced physical paper.
As a result, this fall, several of Georgia’s paper and timber mills, including major ones operated by International Paper and Georgia-Pacific, closed, citing declining demand for paper products, increased foreign competition, and high operating costs. This meant nearly 2,000 direct job losses and almost 8,000 indirect ones. In wood industry terms, it was like watching 290,000 log trucks drive over a cliff.
“We were lucky to avoid mill closures for so long here in Georgia,” says Mr. Dartnell of the state’s forestry commission. “But when it came, it came hard – a gut punch.”
The scene here in Georgia is being replicated in other timber markets from New Hampshire to Idaho, raising larger questions about what measures the United States could take to become more self-reliant and preserve its foundational industries. While most of the U.S. wood supply has historically been homegrown, imports have surged in recent years, particularly from Canada. That country supplies about 30% of America’s softwood.
In New Hampshire, for example, the Trump administration shut down the state’s hardwood trade with China, causing disruptions for mills that rely on that market. The same applies to New Hampshire’s trade with Canada. That, combined with high inventories and a weak housing market, has made it difficult for businesses – and families – to plan effectively.
“We are talking about the primary input in home construction, about products that are part of our everyday lives,” says Andrew Muhammad, a resource economist at the University of Tennessee. “But we also are talking about a natural resource that actually is vital in how we preserve biodiversity and fight climate change.”
Reviving “Big Lumber,” he says, referring to large-scale, industrial-level timber production, “is going to require that we rethink wood in the United States.” This means promoting wood products as new building materials, using fuel such as pellets for heating in the European market, and expanding the Caribbean lumber market.
A new chapter for timber?
The Trump administration says it is trying to do just that.
Preserving forestry to protect biodiversity and increase carbon storage is not a cause that has carried weight with the White House.
But for its economic importance President Trump has made wood – and the harvesting of timber – a national security issue alongside aluminum cans and auto parts. In March, he issued an executive order that the government ease up on “heavy-handed” regulations on timber harvesting on federal lands. In October, another order imposed an additional 10% tariff on top of a 35% tax already on Canadian lumber, which accounts for most U.S. wood imports. The goal is to increase domestic timber production.
Given that timber is a larger part of gross domestic product in Canada than steel, David Eby, British Columbia’s premier, complained last month that tariffs on Canadian lumber are now higher than those the United States puts on Russian wood. “Let that sink in,” Mr. Eby said.
For some American woodsmen, the tariffs have been a needed boost.
Tariffs on Canadian wood are “part of the reason we’re seeing a shift toward more use of Southern yellow pine,” says Paul Jannke, a principal at Forest Economic Advisors in Littleton, Massachusetts. “But it’s a slow shift.”
Whether the tariffs are a practical or sustainable solution is another question.
Though the tariffs were meant to turn home builders toward domestic woods, such as Southern yellow pine, some builders have simply switched to imported spruce from Sweden and Finland, less for price than for preference, they say.
And, for many, how the American market will adjust remains a mystery.
Seeking solutions to timber woes
In Homer, Georgia, for example, Cory Keesee says that he is trying to cut his way out of an economic mess.
The third-generation logger runs a crew of about 20 sawyers and loggers. Amid slumping demand and a need to retain his workers, he is operating his mill at about 70% of capacity – near the U.S. average for sawmills. But to make money, he says, the mill needs to run at 85%. The margins are that small.
Everyone from loggers to landowners is hurting, he says.
“It’s gotten bad in the last couple of years, and everyone has tried to hang on, but you can only hang on so long,” says Mr. Keesee. “People like us who have been sawmilling their whole lives, it’s hard for us when they are flooding it with cheaper lumber. We can share the wealth. But we can’t share it all.”
Trying to address Georgia’s timber woes, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has assembled a task force to suss out new opportunities for Georgia wood.
Georgia Tech University, for one, is at the forefront of technology that might one day refine new types of aviation fuel from trees. The state is also pioneering the use of so-called “mass timber” – cross-laminated panels of two-by-sixes that replace concrete and steel. Mass timber was used in 2024 to build a new office complex at 619 Ponce de Leon in Atlanta.
How those nascent efforts compare with the rush among other nations to compete in timber products, such as lumber and pulp, remains to be seen.
“Brazil, China, and Indonesia are building brand new, state-of-the-art mills, and we’re running mills built in 1936,” says Mr. Dartnell. “It’s a Model T that’s been running for 90 years compared to a brand-new Ford F-250.”
For Professor Muhammad, tariffs are only part of a complicated set of solutions for sagging timber markets.
Tariffs “may temporarily feel good, and it may also feel good to those who felt particularly threatened by Canadian lumber,” he says. “But if we’re talking about long-term structural change on the production and demand side, it’s really about educating people about the importance of wood and forestry.”
Mr. Williams, the Pembroke sawmill owner, is trying to do his part in reimagining the U.S. forest industry, including methods and costs of building affordable homes, currently in short supply.
His small mill custom-cuts structures that he calls “barnominiums” – a cross between a barn and a condominium – from large yellow pine timbers. An aeronautical engineer by trade, Mr. Williams bought the mill five years ago. His 18-year-old son and two of his son’s friends run the mill while he draws and assembles the housing structures.
By finding a niche, his mill is turning a profit.
To Mr. Williams, tariffs are a form of “nonviolent leverage” that can be helpful.
“But our reforms have to go deeper,” he says. “I think we have to go back to a family model, built on common sense, where we can find long-term solutions and create economic change by educating ourselves and also learning trades. Anything worth doing is going to be hard.”
