Postwar Trends in U.S. Forest Products Trade

A Global, National, and Regional View

Roger A. Sedjo, Samuel J. Radcliffe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138954267
• eBook ISBN: 9781317356806
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

By the end of World War II, the United States had become well integrated into the world markets for forest products. No longer can domestic prices of forest products be viewed as being wholly determined by domestic demand and supply, nor even by North American supply and demand, but must be viewed in a worldwide context. Originally published in 1980, this work provides a comprehensive overview of the nature of global forestry, particularly as it pertains to international trade flows of forest products, and analyses the role of the United States in a global context. This is a valuable resource for any student or researcher interested in environmental studies, global trade relations, and foreign market development.

Chapter 1
Introduction

International trade in forest products has a long history. One of the earliest recorded accounts of a seagoing voyage documents the delivery of forty shiploads of cedar from the coast of Lebanon on the eastern Mediterranean to Egypt in about 2600 B.C.(1). The Old Testament records King Solomon's importation of large quantities of cedar from Lebanon, which was used to build the great temple of Israel nearly one thousand years before the birth of Christ.

However, despite ancient references to such international trade, this topic has not typically elicited a great deal of interest. The reasons for this are numerous. Some form of wood has generally been available in most areas of the globe. Also, wood substitutes, for particular uses, are plentiful. Thus, building in much of the ancient world utilized materials other than wood for construction. In addition, in areas where fuelwood was not readily available, other fuels were commonly used. Furthermore, the value per unit of wood is relatively low, implying high transportation costs relative to its value. These factors suggest that traditional wood markets tended to be localized and not well integrated internationally.

In North America the early settlers almost certainly viewed wood as an inexhaustible resource and one that was more of an obstacle than an asset (2). It is true that in some areas, such as the Great Plains, the sod house replaced the log cabin that was so common on the heavily wooded East Coast. But generally, as the population migrated, new areas of forest provided the necessary wood supplies, and logging activity generally shifted to accommodate the movement of population and markets.

Given this environment, it is not surprising that international and interregional trade volumes in forest products were modest, and trade in forest products was not very important. Therefore, historically, neither foresters, forest economists, the forest product industry, nor public agencies charged with the stewardship of the public forest resources have shown much interest in the international, or even interregional, aspects of the trade in forest resources. Consistent with the historic lack of interest in the world forest product markets was an apathy regarding the contributions of the various U.S. regions to the totality of U.S. forest products trade.

Gradually, but continuously, however, U.S. interactions with foreign markets for forest products have been increasing, and the view that U.S. market conditions are determined by strictly local or domestic forces is becoming increasingly unrealistic. By the end of World War I the United States had become a net importer of pulp and paper products, a situation which has continued to prevail without exception for over sixty years. During World War II the United States became a net importer of softwood lumber, and this situation has continued unaltered, except for the year 1947 (3), to the present. In the early 1960s the great Columbus Day storm swept the forests of the Pacific Northwest. The resulting salvage operation stimulated the then-fledgling log export market to Japan so that within a decade earnings on conifer log exports from the Pacific Northwest alone amounted to more than $750 million. In recent years, the United States, as a major importer of both wood pulp and newsprint, has also experienced earnings of over $1 billion from the exports of paper and paperboard products. Today the United States is generally well integrated into world markets for forest products. Domestic prices of forest products can no longer be viewed as being wholly determined by domestic demand and supply, nor even by North American supply and demand, but must be viewed in a worldwide context.

In response to the evolving environment, there has been additional interest in the international dimension of forest product trade and resources, and research in this topic has been on the increase in recent years. The U.S. Forest Service has gradually expanded its research and informational activities related to international aspects of forestry and the forest products trade. For example, the Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station is now actively documenting and publishing trade data and examining trade issues that are of special interest to that region. On the national level, the 1980 Forest Service Timber Assessment Model has incorporated international dimensions into its structure, again reflecting the increased role perceived for international trade. Also, the forest products industry-particularly that segment involved in international trade-now looks with increased interest toward international markets, recognizing the importance of having a more sophisticated understanding of international forest product trade relationships. Finally, our study, supported by both the Forest Service and the Weyerhaeuser Company Foundation, is also a testimonial to the increased interest in the international dimensions of forestry.

Background to the Study

In the summer of 1977 Resources for the Future (RFF) began its formalized and expanded Forest Economics and Policy Program. Forest policy issues were not new to RFF, research in this topic area having been undertaken at various times by numerous researchers beginning in the late 1950s. However, the creation of a formalized program reflected a commitment by RFF to a continuing interest in research in forest economics and policy issues.

Several program objectives were established at the inception of the program. These included the desire to "undertake research in important areas which had been neglected" and to "contribute to the establishment of a comprehensive professional literature." At that time several broad, research topic areas were selected for extensive study including international forestry. The inclusion of this topic area reflected the judgment that this was an important area that had not been well researched. Within international forestry, we subsequently chose as the principal thrust the broad question of the future U.S. role in the world forest economy. However, in order to adequately examine this question, we needed a clearer view of the current U.S. role as well as the U.S. role in the recent past.

A literature search revealed that little had been written on this question. Within the United States, John Zivnuska had done a report on U.S. Timber Resources in a World Economy for RFF in 1967. Also, Irving Holland had an appendix on international trade in The Report of the President's Advisory Panel on Timber and the Environment (1973). In addition, the Forest Service's The Outlook for Timber in the United States (1973) had a section devoted to international trade. Beyond these, little had been done in the United States.

With the exception of Zivnuska's work, these studies were not very satisfactory for us since they tended to take a two-country view of forest product trade between the United States and the rest of the world, while we were primarily interested in understanding the overall structure of world forest resource production and trade. In addition, to properly understand the role of the United States, it was necessary to investigate the forest product trade relationships between particular countries, especially the United States and Canada. Finally, it had been recognized that there were vast differences within the United States in the contributions to total U.S. international forest products trade of the various U.S. regions. However, very little research had been undertaken on the regional trade contributions since the data, although they did exist, were not readily accessible.

In this context, the first priority of the newly founded research activities in international forestry was to examine the global structure of forest products production and trade and recent U.S. experience within that structure. The second priority was to investigate the contributions of the individual U.S. regions to that experience. This manuscript is the result of that effort.

Objectives of the Study

The study fulfills several important objectives. First, in the tradition of earlier RFF studies [for example, Potter and Christy (4), and Manthy (5) ], it is designed to organize available data that has not previously been assembled in an easily usable form. For example, the data for the various U.S. regions appearing in this report fall into this category. The U.S. Census has maintained data on forest products exports and imports by commodity and by customs districts for an extended period of time. However, the forest products portions of this data were never assembled separately, and only data for the most recent five years are available on computer tapes. Fortunately, the U.S. Maritime Administration (MarAd) has classified oceangoing cargoes by their U.S. region of origin. These data are available on computer tapes for the most recent ten-year period. Also, fortuitously, the MarAd regional groupings are quite compatible with the major U.S. forest-producing regions. Therefore, the MarAd data provide the basic source from which our regional series for international trade in forest products has been developed. Of course, oceangoing trade, while dominant for forest products, does not exhaust the mode of international transport. Particularly for the U.S.-Canadian and U.S.-Mexican trade, large volumes of forest products are transported overland. These flows were captured by using U.S. Census data and integrating these into the MarAd data.

Our second objective is to provide a comprehensive overview of the nature of global forestry, particularly as it pertains to international trade flows of forest products. We describe the forest inventory and how the existing world forest resources are distributed, identify the major forest product-producing countries, summarize important trading patterns by country and commodity, and briefly discuss changes in production and trade patterns that have occurred following World War II. In addition to the U.S. data, we also make use of various international data sources, particularly the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. For the analysis of changing trends, we focus principally on three time periods—1950, 1961-65, and 1976. This analysis is largely descriptive and designed to provide the reader with a comprehensive overview of the contributions of the traditional wood products producers— North America, the USSR, and Europe—to world production and trade during the postwar period, and it also documents the increasing role being assumed by the nontraditional producers.

As a third objective, we describe comprehensively and analyze the role of the United States in a global context. Particular attention will be given to the complementary nature of the United States and Canada within North America. In addition, the trade patterns of the United States are analyzed separately vis-à-vis both the rest of the world and U.S. individual trading partners.

Our fourth objective is to analyze the role of the regions within the United States in world trade. We utilize the newly compiled U.S. regional data to describe and compare the roles of the various U.S. regions in the forest products trade patterns and trends of the United States for the period 1967-76.

Our final objective is to provide other researchers with a reference source as a point of departure for further work. The report's appendixes are extensive and a detailed table of contents is provided to assist the user in determining what sections of the report or the appendixes may be useful. Although the report's appendixes include data only for the years 1967 to 1976, the Receiving and Evaluation Division, Foreign Market Development of the Foreign Agricultural Service, in the U.S. Department of Agriculture has indicated its intention to maintain and update the data series developed in this study. Thus, a growing data base will become available to researchers.

Appendix A provides a detailed documentation of the regional data. It is intended to provide researchers with sufficient information on the data sources, definitions, methods used, and so forth, so that the data can be updated with consistency or modified to fit the requirements of individual researchers. Appendixes B and C provide detailed data of national U.S. forest products trade by commodity and relate to the discussion of chapters 5 and 6. Appendixes D through M examine ten U.S. regions over the period 1967-76. The nature of each region's forest products trade is briefly described followed by considerable amount of regional specific data. Most of the data have not previously been published in a comprehensive easily accessible form.

References

1. Gerhard Herm, The Phoenicians (New York, William Morrow, 1975).

2. Marion Clawson, "Forests in the Long Sweep of American History," Science vol. 204, no. 4398 (1979) pp. 1168-1174.

3. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, "Historical Forestry Statistics of the United States," Statistical Bulletin no. 228 (Washington, D.C., USDA, Division of Forest Economics Research, 1958).

4. Neal Potter and Francis T. Christy, Jr., Trends in Natural Resource Commodities: Statistics of Prices Output, Consumption, Foreign Trade, and Employment in the United States, 1870-1959 (Baltimore, Md., Johns Hopkins University Press for Resources for the Future, 1962).

5. Robert S. Manthy, Natural Resource Commodities—A Century of Statistics: Prices, Output, Consumption, Foreign Trade, and Employment in the United States, 1870-1973 (Baltimore, Md., Johns Hopkins University Press for Resources for the Future, 1978).

Chapter 2
Summary and Findings

The world's forestry resources are substantial and broadly distributed. As measured in either land area or growing stock, the USSR (with 33 percent of the world's volume) is the dominant region. However, North America (with 16 percent of the growing stock), South America (with 27 percent), and Asia (with 15 percent) also have a large portion of the world's total forest resources, while Europe's portion is relatively modest (5 percent). Africa and Oceania make up the remainder. The world conifer (softwood) and broadleaf (hardwood) forests are less evenly distributed, with the USSR and North America accounting for about 85 percent of the world's total; adding Europe brings the percentage to over 90 percent. Broadleaf forests are more evenly distributed, with South America and Asia accounting for over 70 percent by volume and the USSR and North America accounting for another 18 percent. Within the global context, North America has about 16 percent of the total volume, with the United States and Canada having roughly equal shares of this inventory.

In 1976 the traditional world timber producers—North America, Europe, and the USSR—accounted for 46 percent of the world's roundwood production. Their dominance in 1976 was even greater for industrial roundwood (76 percent) and still greater for conifer industrial round-wood (88 percent). This dominance, as reflected in the share of worldwide production, however, has eroded considerably since 1959; the earliest date for which data are available. In 1959 the traditional producers' share was 66 percent, 83 percent, and 92 percent for roundwood, industrial roundwood, and conifer industrial roundwood, respectively.

While North America's portion of total roundwood production also declined over the 1959-76 period, her conifer industrial production share moved against the trend and rose from 38.4 percent in 1959 to about 40 percent in 1976. Within this context, the U.S. share of both total and conifer roundwood production fell. However, the decline in the U.S. conifer roundwood production share was modest (from 28.3 percent to 27 percent).

To summarize, the traditional producing regions have a greater share of the world's conifer resources than of its nonconifer resources. They also dominate all types of forest production; however, they have a greater impact on industrial conifer production and a lesser one on total roundwood production. The traditional producers' share of world production, both total and conifer, declined between 1959 and 1976, North America had a substantial share of both inventories and production and has modestly expanded its share of the world's industrial conifer production.

In 1976 only two of the world's seven continental regions had net out-flows (surpluses)¹ of forest products. North America accounted for over three-fourths of the total intercontinental surplus and the USSR had the remainder. Almost 90 percent of the intercontinental deficits were accounted for, in about equal proportions, by Europe and Asia, with the remainder of the deficit distributed among Africa, Latin America, and Oceania. Between 1961-65 and 1976 the share of the intercontinental deficit accounted for by both Latin America and Oceania declined, as these...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Glossary
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Summary and Findings
• 3. World Forest Resources and Forest Products Trade--An Overview
• 4. North American Forest Products Trade
• 5. U.S. Trade in Forest Products
• 6. International Forest Products Trade of Major U.S. Regions
• APPENDIXES