Since September 24, the US imposed 10% duties on Chinese wood products while China imposed 5 or 10% duties on American wood products except for the 25% applied to Southern Yellow Pine imports. For China, wood products supply from the US represents about 10% of the total imports and can be substituted from other sources. Meantime, Chinese furniture manufacturers suffer from the higher costs of the hardwood lumber imported from the US.

US logs and lumber exports to China increased considerably in the last three years, thus the decline of exports may influence forest products suppliers.

China is the largest importing country of southern yellow pine (SYP) logs. If this declines, China would probably buy more New Zealand radiate pine logs or Russian logs in order to replace SYP logs. The next concern is if the US. would increase the duties to 25% in 2019.