Tree Frog Editor: This insight paper by political risk analyst Robert McKellar offers a strategic lens on how a second Trump administration is shaping US behaviour as a global actor — an issue with direct implications for trade-exposed sectors. McKellar is a founding partner at Harmattan Risk and the co-author of “Trump’s Second Term: Political Risk and the Forest Products Sector,” an analysis of US trade policy, tariff dynamics, and geopolitical uncertainty. In this paper, he steps back from industry-specific analysis to explore the broader strategic logic — and contradictions — underlying current US global behaviour, providing context for the policy volatility and trade uncertainty facing the sector.
Robert McKellar
The US, a lynchpin global player, has become a change bomb, and having a clear sense of the US as an agent on the world stage is critical to sense-making that can inform appropriate strategic responses. But as it stands, Trump, whose character shapes his administration, is a wildcard. He is seemingly bored to tears by stability in any issue he deals with, and bored by a set menu of priorities. …Do we resign ourselves to perpetually playing catch up with US moves and their reverberations, or is it possible to get ahead of the Trumpian storm with a reasonably accurate sketch of the US as a global actor? If its moves were guided by strategic rationality, we would be able to extrapolate some idea of its future behaviour, and even a sense of how the international system might look in a few years and the critical challenges any given state might present…
Seasoned observers of US politics and international behaviour might have foreseen some of what is happening now, but by and large they did not expect Godzilla. Thus, they have often latched onto their own predispositions to fill in the considerable blanks. This has, for the most part, yielded two poles of interpretation. One is that Trump and his team are acting on a strategic assessment, and that despite apparent mayhem their moves are rational, even coldly calculating. The other is that the US has succumbed to the baser aspects of personal rule. Thus, Trump’s eccentric character and ego are the main source of US global behaviour. …The emerging reality no doubt lies somewhere in between, but to triangulate to an approximation, we need to prod around both poles of interpretation.
Montana’s forestry industry is entering this year with more questions than answers, from low lumber prices to high housing costs for workers to questions about tariffs, but there is room for strategic adaptation. That’s according to an economist who gave an update on the sector in the 2026 Montana Economic Report, put out by the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Montana. …Scott said the number of people employed in the private sector in forestry in Montana statewide has dropped in 2025. …His main points are that while timber harvests are down, the federal government is making a push to increase harvests. …He said the Trump administration’s tariff policy remains another wildcard. “A combination of lumber and trade-related tariffs has been implemented to bolster domestic demand, by raising the cost of Canadian lumber… it is still too early to tell whether these measures will meaningfully shift trade flows.”
RUSS TAYLOR provided the latest quarterly report from the 
CLEVELAND, Ohio — A state panel this week extended its offer to help finance construction of a new 129-room boutique hotel in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood. While that doesn’t guarantee the hotel will move forward, the developer leading the project said construction can’t start without the state’s financing. The board… offered until Jan. 31, 2027 are $35 million worth of state bonds for the roughly $55 million project that would build a Marriott Tribute Portfolio boutique hotel. …The air quality facilities noted in the resolution include the seven-story building’s proposed use of mass-timber in its construction. …The presence of wood-timber construction above a first-floor reinforced concrete deck is noted in this axonometric view of the proposed Ohio City Hotel (DLR). The use of mass timber instead of reinforced concrete can save up to 40% in ongoing heating and cooling emissions for a building’s user as well as reduced emissions, according to Dan Whalen, at Places Development. 
Two conservation groups are suing the Trump administration, challenging a U.S. Department of Agriculture rule that strips public comment requirements from most national forest projects. In a federal 
ALASKA — The US Forest Service is moving forward with a plan to harvest over 5,000 acres of trees in the Tongass National Forest, just east of Ketchikan. A majority of that will be old-growth trees, which some people worry will be devastating to the forest. The Forest Service released the 
Oregon’s forestry department has proposed a flexible approach to managing state-owned forests west of the Cascades over the next 70 years. Staff say it will allow them to adapt as scientific understanding evolves — and as the climate changes. But environmental groups say the department has drafted a plan that’s too vague. They would like to see more focus on saving the mature and complex forests. Members of the public can 
The Washington wood-products industry says timber harvests will spiral downward if lawmakers pass a bill championed by Lands Commissioner Dave Upthegrove. At Upthegrove’s request, legislators are considering authorizing the Department of Natural Resources to sell “ecosystem services,” possibly by delaying or canceling timber harvests. DNR officials say ecosystem services could be a new source of revenue as businesses buy carbon credits to “offset” their emissions. Carbon credits could add to the money rural counties and schools receive from timber sales, according to DNR. The timber industry, backed by the Washington State Association of Counties, argues its more likely ecosystem services would replace timber sales. Rural public services would get less money, Paul Jewell, the counties’ policy director, said. More importantly, rural counties will lose timber jobs, he said. “Sales of ecosystem services can’t replace those economic benefits,” he told the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee on Jan. 28.
Over the past year, a wave of high-profile development proposals — from oil fields and mining roads to timber projects — has reshaped a fast-moving debate, propelling Alaska into the center of the national conversation over how to balance energy production with conservation. These projects have revived long-running tensions over what the state’s public lands are for, and who they ultimately benefit. The federal government has long viewed Alaska as resource-rich, a posture that’s intensified under the Trump administration. After meeting Trump in 2018, Gov. Mike Dunleavy called Alaska “America’s natural resource warehouse.” But the last time Alaska figured this prominently in national energy and conservation debates was in the late 1970s, said Philip Wight, at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. What makes today’s landscape different, Wight said, is a unified federal government pushing multiple contentious development proposals at once, with fewer moderate Republicans willing to oppose them ….
PITTSBURG, New Hampshire — The state has reached a deal on the management of the Connecticut Lakes Headwaters Working Forest, a 146,000 acre property constituting 3% of New Hampshire’s forests, according to Gov. Kelly Ayotte. The forest is privately owned but is under a conservation easement, which means the state has oversight regarding how the land is managed and can ensure it remains a working timberland. Since the land was purchased in 2022 by an out-of-state carbon offset company, Aurora Sustainable Lands, local loggers have raised concerns about reduced timber harvesting on the property. As a carbon-offset company, Aurora curbed logging in order to sell the carbon they stored. …In the plan agreed upon last month, Aurora will increase the average annual timber harvest. …“The Connecticut Lakes Headwaters Working Forest is critical to recreation, tourism and the timber industry in our North Country,” Ayotte said.
NEW YORK
…Timber prices have been low for a long time; they never really recovered from the 2008 housing crash. Nearly a dozen paper mills closed across the South in recent years, and Hurricane Helene tore down trees in much of Georgia and the Carolinas. It’s left many in Georgia, one of the leading states for forestry, with a dilemma: what do you do when your income relies on a forest but nobody wants to buy your trees? A group of researchers and industry leaders thinks paying landowners for carbon storage could help. “We may see a decline in the number of acres that are kept in forests and the quality of the land that is forested,” said David Eady with Georgia Tech’s business school. Losing those trees would shrink the industry and be devastating for the environment. …So Eady and others asked: why not use that carbon storage to keep foresters in business?
