CV NEWS FEED // A quiet collapse is sweeping through America’s hardwood log export industry, completely devastating working families in rural communities who’ve been left behind as trade battles play out far above their heads.
On March 4, China abruptly banned imports of U.S. hardwood logs, citing pest concerns — though industry insiders believe it was thinly veiled economic retaliation to the Trump administration’s recent tariffs.
The impact was immediate and massive: China is the dominant buyer of U.S. logs, importing the vast majority of what America exports. Without that market, the entire industry lost its economic lifeline, according to Seth Riggio, a 35-year-old log broker based in Greenville, South Carolina.
The move set off a chain reaction that has pushed loggers, exporters, truckers, and rural communities across the country into financial ruin.
“This is destroying lives,” Riggio told CatholicVote in an exclusive interview. “I know guys that have already missed their mortgage payments. I know a couple of guys that have committed suicide. That’s just how hard it’s hit them.”
An industry made up largely of Amish workers — roughly 60% — and seasoned loggers who’ve spent decades in the trade is now hanging by a thread. Most of them aren’t online. Many don’t use email. But they’re the ones who cut, haul, and ship the hardwood that powers one of America’s most essential but overlooked industries, which contributes an estimated $300 billion to the U.S. economy annually and supports more than two million jobs.
The same day that the ban was announced, China clarified it would still accept logs already on the water — as long as they were properly fumigated or debarked and certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). But on March 5, the USDA itself intervened.
“The USDA decided… they would not give any phytosanitary certificates for logs that were already en route,” Riggio said. “Which meant that the entire industry had to all of a sudden, with all the logs that were on the water, find a way to seek out a different customer in another country and change destination for the logs.”
It was a sudden and massive logistical scramble for exporters like Riggio. They had 25 containers already on ships bound for China. Those logs, without the USDA certification, couldn’t be delivered. The only port still available to reroute the cargo was in Vietnam.
Vietnam, however, was already full.
“They take one log for every 10 taken by China,” Riggio explained. “Vietnam already had a full amount of logs heading to their country because they didn’t stop buying. No one knew the ban was going to happen.”
That kind of sudden loss isn’t just a rough patch — it’s extinction for logging businesses. Within days of the ban, the small business Riggio helped build over five years had collapsed. The log broker said 18 out of 42 operations that he worked with have also already closed their doors permanently.
One of them, he added, was a company founded by the owner’s great-great-grandfather.
“That’s over 100 years of logging in that family, and now that family doesn’t know what to do,” Riggio said.
The majority of the workers in the logging industry don’t have college degrees, according to Riggio. Many have been in the industry since they were teenagers, often following in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers.
“A large number of them don’t even have high school degrees,” Riggio said. “Logging is all they’ve ever known.”
For those who do have degrees, it’s often in forestry — a highly specialized field that doesn’t translate easily to other careers.
“This is the guy who has the expertise to know which trees do you cut down, which trees do you let stand … and what the heck’s their degree useful for besides what they do? Nothing.”
Without a way to pivot, and with few job opportunities in the rural communities they call home, the collapse of the log export market isn’t just an economic blow — it’s a personal and cultural one, uprooting lives and identities built around this work.
And for most of these workers, there’s little financial buffer to absorb the hit.
These aren’t corporations with reserves. Most loggers don’t have savings accounts or college degrees. What they have are contracts, equipment, and a forest to work. Their “capital” is the timber they’ve already paid to harvest, Riggio explained.
He described one logger in Massachusetts, James McNamee, who paid the state $300,000 for timber contracts. He can’t cut the trees, can’t sell the logs, and can’t get a refund.
“Without someone to buy those logs, there’s no point in cutting them,” he said. “If you cut them, you’ll just lose money on them because they’ll become firewood.”
Making matters worse, Riggio said states say they won’t grant extensions on logging contracts — even as loggers stand helpless with no buyers.
“The state governments — almost universally, mind you — are refusing to grant extensions to the contracts,” Riggio said. “Which means that now McNamee has two months left with a bunch of standing timber that even if he got started cutting today, he wouldn’t complete everything he needed to make his $300,000 back.”
The trucking companies are falling too. One Riggio works with had 50 trucks and was moving up to 45 loads per day. Now they’re down to five. The owner says if nothing changes soon, he’ll have to shut down.
And yet, when disaster strikes in America, these are the men who show up.
“When the hurricanes went through in North Carolina, our industry shut down for two weeks,” Riggio said. “All the loggers went there and cut the trees off the road. The Amish brought their own wagons. It wasn’t FEMA, it wasn’t the government. It was the logging industry that made sure that the roads were open and clear so that any help could get in there.”
“That’s what we did,” he said. “And now we’re just being completely and utterly ignored.”
Beyond the economic toll, Riggio warned that the logging industry plays a vital role in forest health and national infrastructure — and it’s already stretched thin.
“Our industry’s biggest complaint over the past five years is that we don’t have enough loggers,” he said. “We’re not cutting enough just to maintain the forest.”
With more trees growing than being harvested, forest overgrowth is becoming a widespread problem — and with the workforce aging and shrinking, the collapse of exports threatens not just jobs, but the long-term sustainability of the industry itself.
In the weeks since the ban, Riggio says he’s contacted senators, congressmen, governors, and newsrooms — pleading for help, attention, or even just a response.
Even the logging industry’s main trade group, the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) — which is supposed to represent loggers in Washington — has remained silent.
“As an industry, we kind of expected that AHEC would rush to our aid and would immediately begin lobbying and saying, ‘Look, the tariffs are fine, but you’ve got to find some way to lift the ban,’” Riggio said.
But that support never came. According to Riggio, multiple sources with close ties to AHEC’s board have confirmed that the group’s silence is rooted in self-interest. Its leadership, largely composed of U.S. sawmill owners, is profiting from the crisis — buying logs that were meant for export at steep discounts from sellers with nowhere else to turn.
“Those men are getting logs cheaper than they’ve ever gotten before,” Riggio explained. “They are kind of gleefully watching as the loggers and the exporters and the transporters and the truckers just get screwed.”
He emphasized the deeper human toll of the situation.
“This is affecting a lot more than people know,” Riggio said. “These are good men. These are men that have lived extremely moral lives. These are men who wouldn’t bat an eye to help out someone else.”
He shared that the people comprising the industry — mostly Amish, Evangelical, and working-class men from across the country — overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
“It’s not that we’re against the tariffs,” Riggio added. “It’s not that we want to take beef with Trump’s government. No — we like what he’s doing. But we just need help here.”
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