How federal overreach is harming Alaska communities and driving up timber prices for all
As the tariff war heats up, President Trump has threatened to levy a 25% import tax on Canadian products. While he has agreed to delay the tariffs for now, if and when they do go into effect, the United States will see a dramatic increase in the cost of vital products, like lumber.
Canada is the United States’ largest foreign supplier of lumber, accounting for roughly 25% of all the lumber we use. A tariff on lumber couldn’t come at a worse time as it will certainly increase the cost of building housing.
New affordable housing is impossible without affordable timber. To put the consequences of these tariffs into perspective, one industry trade group estimates that such tariffs could raise the cost of a new home by $7,500 to $10,000. With tariffs high and housing costs increasing, now would be the time to encourage growth in the American lumber industry, especially in areas that are rich in timber.
The Tongass National Forest can help provide the lumber we need to provide affordable housing to more people … if only the federal government would allow it. Trump has justified the tariffs as a way to reinvigorate national industries, like the American timber industry. Meanwhile, two Alaskan timber companies are in a legal battle with the Forest Service to fight for their access to the timber we so desperately need.
An Alaska tradition
The Tongass National Forest is lush with timber that will someday be used in all manner of American goods from homes to pianos to even space travel technology. For all these finished products to come to fruition, the timber must be harvested and milled into lumber—a job in which the Alaskan timber industry takes great pride.
Kirk Dahlstrom has been in the timber industry for decades, both in Alaska and in Washington State. In 1994, federal restrictions meant to protect the spotted owl threatened to destroy Kirk’s family timber business in Washington. Unwilling to sit around and wait for the demise of the company he poured his blood, sweat, and tears into, he packed up his wife and children and moved to Prince of Wales Island in Alaska, where he had purchased a bankrupt sawmill. This was the beginning of his new business, Viking Lumber.
The lumber industry is not for the faint of heart and the Dahlstrom family had to make many sacrifices to get the company up and running. Kirk would often work until midnight, making calls to secure timber sales. Meanwhile, his wife taught herself how to fish and spent her days preparing homemade lunches and dinners for their 40 employees. Their hard work paid off as the Dahlstroms were able to transform the bankrupt sawmill into a thriving company, which not only helped their own family, but also the families of the employees who worked for them.
Kirk and others in their local industry rely on the Tongass to supply their timber and provide for their livelihoods. The Tongass timber is renowned for its strength and beauty, which have helped it earn such a strong reputation across the country.
Yet, even though the demand is high and the timber plentiful, the local industry is treading water, struggling to stay afloat while federal regulations have all but destroyed their companies. And where once the Alaskan timber industry provided over 4,000 jobs, that number has now dropped to under 300.
The U.S. Forest Service barks up the wrong tree
The state of Alaska and its citizens are in a unique position. Ninety-four percent of the land is controlled by the federal government, which has used that control to the detriment of the Alaskan timber industry. In 1990, Congress passed the Tongass Timber Reform Act (TTRA), a statute that gave the United States Forest Service the responsibility of maintaining the timber in a manner that met market demand while also protecting the natural wildlife habitat.
For people in the timber industry, this means they must first buy the trees from the government before they are free to cut them down, mill them into lumber, and sell that lumber to their customers. This has been the way of things for decades, and the local industry has operated their businesses within these boundaries. But in 2013, new regulations were proposed that threw companies like Kirk a curveball they did not expect.
The Secretary of Agriculture at the time had sent out a memo stating that the government wanted to stop selling old-growth trees from the Tongass. Like many government proposals, there was no actual follow-through and it was business as usual for the timber industry. In 2016, however, the old proposal resurfaced, and the Forest Service laid out an actual plan to phase out the sale of older trees. The timber industry was assured that this would not happen overnight. The government promised a smooth transition to newer trees by continuing to sell the old trees as a decreasing share of the overall trees it sold—over the next 15 years.
But the government broke its promise. It never sold the old trees it promised, and in 2021 it confirmed that it never would by executive fiat.
This betrayal on the part of the federal government isn’t just shady; it’s illegal. The TTRA requires the Forest Service to strike a balance between sustainability of the wildlife habitat and the ability of the local timber industry to keep up with market demand. They have failed to strike that balance, and now companies like Viking are struggling, the local economy is suffering, and Americans have lost access to the revered Tongass timber.
Adding more fuel to the fire, the Forest Service also failed to follow through on its own 2016 management plan and used informal guidance, rather than required rulemaking procedures, to make sweeping changes. The Constitution is constructed to prevent agencies from ruling by fiat. Only Congress can pass laws. It is most certainly not the job of unelected bureaucrats who are completely removed from the Alaskan timber industry and its local economy.
Administrative agencies are not above the rule of law. Pacific Legal Foundation is helping Kirk, Brian Brown—a fellow business owner in the timber industry, and the Alaska Forest Association fight back and uphold the separation of powers.
This case is not only important for Alaska’s timber industry, but to all Americans. We need lumber to build necessities, like homes. The less U.S. timber we have access to, the more we must rely on foreign lumber to meet demand. And with an ever-growing tariff war underway, importing lumber will only make homes less affordable than they already are.
And it’s not just timber and housing. Productively using the natural resources our country is blessed with makes all our lives massively better in thousands of ways big and small. Whether its regulatory restrictions or tariffs, anything the supply or drives up the cost of natural resources can’t help but make our lives worse.
Kirk and Brian’s willingness to stand up to the Forest Service is about so much more than protecting their own companies or even the well-being of their employees. Lumber is at the root of so many of our most-beloved products, and without affordable lumber, every individual suffers the financial costs of the trade war. As the cost of tariffs trickles down to the consumer, the lumber becomes more expensive, which means building houses becomes more expensive, which means the cost of housing is more expensive.
