NHLA: Leading The Effort To Strengthening America’s Hardwood Supply Chain
Today, I’m honored to be the first member of the NHLA leadership team to share details about an important new initiative we believe could help shape the future of the hardwood industry. But before I explain where we’re headed, I want to start with how we got here and why this conversation became too important to ignore.
As Chairman of the NHLA, you gain a front-row seat to the challenges facing our industry, and to the very real toll they are taking on mills, businesses, families, and communities across the hardwood sector. You become familiar with statistics, such as the fact that our industry was once thriving and boasted an annual domestic hardwood production volume of well over 12 billion board feet back in 1998, which has steadily shrunk to just over 4 billion board feet in 2025. You recognize that our markets are being flooded with inferior, fake wood products that make false claims about their superiority to solid hardwoods. Your inbox fills up with auction notices for sawmills once owned by friends in the industry. You worry about the future of your own family, which is trying to follow in the footsteps of the three generations before them who made a living from this wonderful industry.
As an association leader, you want to say that you helped make a positive impact on the industry during your time as chairman.
At the 2025 NHLA Annual Convention and Exhibit Showcase, I spoke about the growing importance of bringing the topic of log exports into a broader, industry-wide conversation and ensuring it received thoughtful discussion at the leadership level. I discussed how I secured the topic’s inclusion on the agenda for the 2024 Spring Board Meeting, and I spoke about the work being done by the Market Impacts Committee to examine the facts. I relayed that the task force’s findings would soon be presented to the board, then to the membership, and finally to the industry.
For a better understanding of how the NHLA operates, I’ll give you a quick look inside the framework of the NHLA Board of Directors. Six different committees help direct the organization’s policies and actions. One of those committees is the Market Impacts Committee, which is designed to address issues that could or are affecting the markets for North American-produced hardwood lumber. It is the most appropriate venue for addressing the potential impacts of log exports on our lumber markets, so they took the item on their agenda.
At the 2024 Spring Board Meeting, the Market Impacts Committee began the discussion about the impact that log exports were having on domestic hardwood lumber production. It was quickly decided that the topic was too extensive to discuss solely at the meeting, so the Log and Lumber Export Task Force was formed to investigate it further. Over the next 2 years, the members of this task force put in tremendous effort, including gathering information from both US and international trade data, conducting log-sawing and grading testing, and even visiting foreign sawmilling operations to examine their operations.
The task force presented its extensive findings to the board this past spring. They reported that there have indeed been negative market impacts attributable to the increasing volume of log exports competing with our domestic production. The report ended with potential next steps to address these negative impacts.
One possible solution was to seek a ban or moratorium on log exports. Still, after consultations with international trade law firms, there was no clear pathway to enact such a policy. The NHLA recognizes that the topic of log exports is sensitive to its members, so it currently has no plan to support a log export ban. Instead, the task force recommended another solution, presenting a strategy to encourage increased domestic consumption that would make a positive market impact on our domestic hardwood lumber markets. Instead of dividing our members, we believe that this is not a divisive topic but rather an idea that the entire industry would support.
At the board meeting, a group from Crossroads Strategies, a lobbying and public relations firm based in Washington, DC, made a detailed presentation to the Board.
The details of their presentation and the NHLA’s next steps will be covered by Bill Courtney, CEO of Classic American Hardwoods and current NHLA Board member, in next month’s edition of the National Hardwood Magazine.
For the first time in a very long time, I see light at the end of this very dark tunnel. I see an opportunity to build back up an industry that provides a tremendous amount of benefit to our environment, to our local communities, and to the men and women who work hard to provide for their families in the hardwood lumber business. I am so proud to have played a small role in this exciting next chapter for our industry and am thankful for the leadership the NHLA has provided.
