The EU has made little headway and an attempt to appease the US by delaying controversial import controls has fallen flat. The US forestry industry has accused the EU of erecting trade barriers by favouring its own industry under amended deforestation rules. The EU’s deforestation law, which will ban the import of products from sectors including rubber, cocoa, wood and paper if they come from deforested land, should have come into force last year. Under pressure from the bloc’s trading partners it was delayed until the end of the year. Despite this respite, the nine biggest US forest product organisations accused the EU of setting “severe” compliance challenges, opening a new front in the growing transatlantic trade conflict. The EU has categorised the US — and all its own members — as “low risk”. Heidi Brock, head of AF&PA, said the law amounted to a “non-trade tariff barrier” for US paper and wood products.