Kevin Mason
The Global Supply Chain Pressure Index, which provides a gauge of global supply chain conditions, spiked in April and currently sits at its highest level in almost four years. Several other measures, including the World Bank’s Supply Chain Stress Index are hovering around all-time highs as well. The conflict in the Middle East and resultant spike in energy prices has clearly driven some of the recent increase in supply chain pressure, and the logjam in the Strait of Hormuz, along with some ongoing challenges in the Red Sea, have forced many vessels to take longer routes, adding travel time, increasing fuel costs, and stretching capacity.
However, the situation in Iran is not the sole driver of recent supply chain pressure: In the US we are seeing an acute shortage of truck drivers following a government crackdown on driver qualifications and after a wave of trucking-firm bankruptcies. As a result, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’ long-distance trucking price index has recently jumped from a reading of 181 in January to 210 in April (also approaching all-time highs last seen during the pandemic). Similarly, overland freight pricing data from DAT Freight and Analytics shows that flatbed truck rates have surged since the onset of the Iran war—the national average spot rate for flatbed trucks was $2.72 per mile in February and has rocketed to $3.64 by May. DAT’s national load-to-truck ratio (the number of loads posted for every available truck posted on the DAT load board) sat at an eye-watering 72 in April, up from 35 in April 2025 and just 19 in April 2024.
A deal with Iran may be in the works, but as we learned after the COVID pandemic, it can take months (if not years) for supply chains to normalize. Buckle up.
The Trump administration wants to reimpose a 10% tariff on top trading partners including the EU and Canada, while hitting others with a higher rate, citing concerns about forced labor. The US Trade Representative’s Office made those proposals as part of a report with the results of its investigation into 60 trading partners over their failure to impose and enforce laws to prohibit goods made with forced labor. It’s one of two sprawling trade investigations the administration launched earlier this spring in an effort to restore President Donald Trump’s global tariffs that were struck down by the Supreme Court in February. …The USTR probe, conducted under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, found that six countries have failed to effectively enforce existing laws prohibiting goods made with forced labor: Canada, Ecuador, the European Union, Indonesia, Mexico and Pakistan. The report recommended a 10% duty. It recommended the same duty for another nine countries.
– The Trump administration’s trade agency said on Wednesday it will kick off the first of three negotiating rounds with Mexico this week to revamp the North American trade agreement, but made no mention of any talks with Canada. The U.S. Trade Representative’s office said in a statement that Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Jeffrey Goettman will lead bilateral talks in Mexico City on Thursday and Friday focused on “economic security and rules of origin for key industrial goods.” USTR Jamieson Greer stayed in Washington to attend a White House cabinet meeting on Thursday. USTR said the U.S. and Mexico will hold a second round of negotiations in Washington June 16 to 17, focused on agriculture and “a level playing field,” with a third set of talks in Mexico City scheduled for the week of July 20. …But USTR’s statement made no mention of bilateral talks with Canada.
The US Trade Representative has determined that several Brazilian acts, policies, and practices are actionable under Section 301 and has proposed tariffs of 25% on all goods of Brazil, with specified exemptions and an annex of excluded products. …The determination covers multiple areas, including illegal deforestation, and states that timber and agricultural production linked to illegal deforestation can burden U.S. commerce by lowering costs for competing products and distorting prices. The notice describes timber-sector fraud risks, including the laundering of illegally harvested timber through supply chains, and states that illegally sourced timber products can devalue legally sourced timber prices by an estimated 7% to 16%. On wood-related findings, the notice references concerns that Brazilian products may be made with timber harvested illegally. It also describes limits in auditing and verification under Brazil’s Forest Code registration system. …The notice sets a public comment schedule that opens June 1, 2026.
European negotiators agreed late on Tuesday to implement the controversial trade agreement concluded last summer with the US. However, the deal — signed in the Scottish city of Turnberry — remains fragile as long as US President Donald Trump continues to use tariffs as a tool of political pressure. Diplomats and MEPs reached an agreement late on Tuesday to implement the contentious EU-US agreement, which eliminates duties on most US industrial goods imported into Europe. …The so-called “Turnberry Agreement,” criticised by MEPs as unbalanced, raises US tariffs on EU goods to as much as 15%. …In the final compromise text, the Commission would be able to suspend the trade agreement — at the request of either Parliament or a member state — if the US fails to lift tariffs on European steel and aluminium products by the end of 2026.
ARNEBURG, Germany — Valmet will deliver a new ash crystallization plant for Mercer Stendal mill in Arneburg, Germany. This investment is part of Mercer’s long-term vision to further reduce the mill’s emissions and improve its performance. Ash crystallization plant contributes to this target by helping to close the mill’s chemical circulation, reducing the need for make-up chemicals, and by helping to extend the recovery boiler maintenance intervals to 24 months and beyond. …Martin Zenker, mill manager, said “The new ash crystallization plant will help us to further improve both operational and environmental performance.” …Mercer Stendal mill in Arneburg, Germany was started up in 2004 and today has a capacity of 740,000 tonnes per year of bleached softwood kraft pulp. The biomass power plant at the site is one of the largest of its kind in Germany with an output of 148 megawatts.
Russian lumber production is rising despite deteriorating sales and falling exports, driving inventories higher as weak household purchasing power limits the domestic market’s ability to absorb excess supply, according to the monthly Russian Lumber Industry Insights report. Companies are trying to maintain production volumes, the report said, but warehouse stocks are rising because domestic demand is weakening. The ministry in May sharply reduced its growth outlook, revising GDP growth for the current year to 0.4% and to 1.4% in 2027, and reported that the economy contracted by 0.3% in the first quarter. …At the same time, the crisis in China’s construction sector has reduced import demand and intensified price competition. …Logistics costs for Russian suppliers continue to rise, the report said, further reducing the profitability of shipments. Taken together, weakening domestic demand, lost market share in China and higher transport costs are creating pressure on exporters and contributing to a buildup of stocks.
Sentiment within Germany’s timber industry remained under pressure in April, with businesses increasingly pessimistic about the months ahead despite a slight improvement in current trading conditions. …Compared with Germany’s wider manufacturing sector, the timber industry continues to underperform, with the ifo Institute’s broader manufacturing index remaining significantly stronger. The picture across the wood sector remains uneven. Companies involved in prefabricated timber construction were the only group to report positive current business conditions, while sawmills, furniture manufacturers and timber packaging businesses continued to report weak trading environments. HDH linked the relatively stronger outlook in timber construction to improving housing activity. …However, the furniture sector continues to struggle with weak consumer confidence and declining construction completions. …Despite isolated signs of recovery in construction-related segments, HDH said overall business confidence remains at a persistently low level.
Canada Wood Japan has helped secure an important market-access outcome for Canadian Hem-Fir (N) dimension lumber in Japan. In collaboration with the National Lumber Grades Authority and the Canadian Lumber Standards Accreditation Board, Canada Wood Japan worked with Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism to obtain recognition of the revised standard design values for Hem-Fir (N) dimension lumber graded under NLGA standards. For builders, designers and structural engineers in Japan, design values are essential. They provide the basis for structural calculations and help determine where and how lumber can be used in code-compliant buildings. When grading rules or design values are revised in Canada, those changes must also be properly understood and accepted by Japanese regulatory authorities to ensure continued market access. …Canada Wood Japan demonstrated that the revised Hem-Fir (N) design values would continue to meet Japan’s structural safety requirements and would not compromise the performance of conventional wooden buildings. 
In this edition of Market Insights, you’ll find:
The Finnish Sawmill Industry Association is urging the government to accelerate wood construction and broaden the use of domestic wood in building, saying Finland is not using wood construction enough to raise value added for domestic wood, support investment and strengthen regional vitality. It calls for the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment to lead a national wood-construction program and appoint a high-level cross-government steering group, the Finnish Sawmill Industry Association reported. The association links wood construction to Finland’s competitiveness and industrial policy and says the market’s development should be treated as part of efforts to cut emissions from the built environment. It also calls for increasing the use of domestic wood more broadly in construction, beyond wood construction in a narrow sense. …It calls for regulation and permitting processes to be developed in a direction it says enables investments and links wood construction to Finland’s clean-transition investment goals. 
The natural cooling effect of snow in northern forests following forest fires is rapidly diminishing. As a result, a fragile climate equilibrium threatens to disappear, potentially leading to additional warming in one of the most climate-sensitive regions on Earth. This is the conclusion of new research by Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. …After a forest fire, the landscape in northern regions often remains open and covered with snow for a long time. This snow reflects a great deal of sunlight and makes the Earth’s surface brighter—an effect known as snow albedo. For years, this compensated for part of the warming caused by CO2 emissions from forest fires. [The study found] that the cooling effect of snow has decreased by nearly 30 percent since the 1960s. Whereas in the past almost half of Canadian forest fires eventually reached natural climate equilibrium …this now applies to only about one in four or five fires.
Globally, fires in 2025 burned the second-lowest area on record since 2002 and emitted the third-lowest CO2 total. Yet, a third successive year of extreme wildfire emissions prevailed in Canada, and catastrophic fires in Los Angeles, South Korea and Europe killed over 90 people and forced over 300,000 evacuations. At the global scale, land area burned by wildfire has declined in since 2002, mainly owing to reduced savannah burning in Africa. However, wildfires are expanding in extratropical forests, and show increasing intensity combined with extreme socioeconomic and environmental impacts1–3. In these areas, wildfire disasters are exacerbated by human land use and the wildland–urban interface4. Many regions are experiencing episodes of extreme wildfires with high rates of spread and intensity associated with substantial loss of life, infrastructure, or carbon stores, even in years with below-average burned area. These hallmarks define an era of declining global burned area but also of rising prominence of extreme and deadly wildfires.
The world is losing its forests faster than it can save them, with severe consequences for the climate, biodiversity and over one billion people who depend on forests for their livelihoods, according to the United Nations’ latest Global Forest Goals Report 2026. Although many countries have expanded forest restoration efforts, strengthened governance frameworks, and improved monitoring systems, progress remains critically insufficient to halt deforestation, lift forest-dependent communities out of poverty, and meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. “We know what to do. We need to act on the information and knowledge we have. But do we have the will to act?” said Éliane Ubalijoro, chief executive officer of Landscape Alliance, the new operating name of the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR & ICRAF). That question runs through the report, which finds that existing tools, policies and institutions have yet to deliver change at the scale required. 
The UK Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has published detailed guidance setting out how a planned UK‑EU sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) deal will reshape forestry-related trade – and is urging businesses to start preparing now. In a wide‑ranging update, the department set out how the agreement would operate in practice, including the removal of most routine border checks and certification requirements for goods moving between Great Britain and the EU. But the guidance also makes clear the scale of regulatory change required, with the UK set to align dynamically with EU rules across a wide set of areas, including pesticides and plant imports. Among the most significant operational shifts set out for horticultural businesses (which includes forestry-related activities). …Further detail on transition periods and exceptions is expected later in 2026, with full implementation targeted for mid‑2027. Read the full 
Japan’s forestry sector is at a crossroads. Population decline and cheap imported timber are driving down prices. Forest ownership is fragmented and small-scale, further limiting profitability. The workforce is aging and shrinking. As a result, many forests — planted decades ago, when timber profits seemed surer — are now under-managed, abandoned, or not replanted after being clear-cut. “Especially over the past few years, we have seen a lot of forest owners decide to give up their land,” says Akio Abe, associate director of the Ishinomaki District Forestry Association in Miyagi Prefecture. …Carbon credits, Abe hopes, can provide the financial backing needed to turn the Ishinomaki District woods into a boon, not a burden, for both local landowners and the environment. Together with corporate partners, the foresters are applying for credits certified by an international body, a rarity among forest carbon projects in Japan.
European timber organisations have made a last, united call for changes to be made to the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) before it comes into force this December. Eighteen organisations from various sectors, including timber, panels and packaging groups, called for an EUDR Information System “without flaws and technical constraints, aligned with business practice”. The coalition underlines that the Information System must be operationally workable and aligned with real business practices. The EUDR Information System, which represents the backbone of the traceability feature of the EU regulation, is aimed to prevent products linked to deforestation from entering the EU market. Particular coalition concerns relate to DDS aggregation, technical limitations of the TRACES-based system, the usability of simplified declarations for SMEs and micro-enterprises and the lack of clear procedures in the event of system disruptions or outages.
Spain is one of the southern European countries on the front line of climate change as higher average temperatures stoke heatwaves, droughts and forest fires. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez presented what he called Spain’s biggest-ever campaign against forest fires on Thursday after deadly blazes devoured a record amount of land last year. Spain is one of the southern European countries on the front line of climate change as higher average temperatures stoke heatwaves, droughts and forest fires. The country sweltered through its hottest summer on record in 2025, when almost 4,000 square kilometres of land went up in smoke, the highest figure registered by the European Forest Fire Information System. “We will put in place all the resources” available to the government “to mitigate this emergency situation as much as possible and to prevent it happening again on this scale,” Sánchez said at the Torrejón airbase outside Madrid.
PORTUGAL — Devastating wildfires gripped Portugal in 2025, when more than a quarter of a million hectares of land burned. With fears that this year could be even worse, Portugal has mounted an intensive nationwide operation to clear fallen trees and dry leaves – the tinder that wildfires thrive on. Citizens are being asked to clear the land around their homes – known to be one of the most effective ways of saving lives – as well as flagging up blocked roads to authorities as these could prevent emergency services from getting to them. …As part of this anticipatory approach, specialist reconnaissance teams will be deployed in each of the country’s sub-regions, tasked with providing the operations commander with essential information on the risk and type of fire. …999 fires were recorded on Portuguese soil in 2025, burning 284,012 hectares. The burned area was twice that of 2024, making 2025 the second-worst year of the last decade.
After a series of record-breaking US heatwaves, the 2026 bee swarm season in North America has started 17 days earlier than last year, pushing beekeepers to adapt to a rapidly shifting season while raising new questions about how honeybees are responding to the climate crisis. According to a 
The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Verra are pleased to announce a collaboration that will bring greater transparency and credibility to the voluntary carbon market. Under this new arrangement, Verified Carbon Units (VCUs) issued through Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Program can now carry an FSC label when they are generated from forests that hold valid FSC Forest Management (FM) certification. This means that buyers and stakeholders can readily identify carbon credits that come from responsibly managed, FSC-certified forestlands. This means projects that are dual registered under both the VCS Program and FSC FM certification will be eligible to apply the FSC label to their VCUs in the Verra Registry. To qualify, projects must demonstrate full spatial and temporal overlap between the VCS project area and the FSC-certified forest, and must hold a valid FSC FM certificate for the entire verification period.
According to a new report from Allied Market Research, the global biomass market size was valued at $59.0 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $121.0 billion by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 7.5% from 2024 to 2033. The rapid shift toward renewable energy sources, growing environmental concerns, and supportive government policies are significantly contributing to the expansion of the biomass market across the globe. The increasing focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving energy security is encouraging governments and industries to invest heavily in biomass energy technologies. Unlike fossil fuels, biomass is considered carbon-neutral because the carbon dioxide released during energy generation is offset by the carbon absorbed during the growth of biomass feedstocks. This advantage is making the biomass market increasingly attractive for sustainable energy development. The growing demand for renewable energy is one of the major factors fueling biomass market growth. … Biomass energy provides a reliable and stable source of renewable power…