Forest products encounter European and American trade barriers

“The Lacey Act and the EU’s due diligence bill will have a major impact on China’s forest industry, which will increase the cost of the company to a certain extent.” On September 7, Fu Jianquan, Deputy Director of the Department of Foreign Economic Affairs of the State Forestry Administration There are some concerns about the development of EU standards.

In 2009, under the influence of the financial crisis, the domestic forestry trade volume was still close to 60 billion U.S. dollars, of which the U.S. and the EU were the top two export regions. The two major markets recently imposed more stringent requirements on the import of forest products and eliminated the entry of smuggled timber.

In July of this year, the new EU law required companies to track the source of their timber harvest. The third stage of the Lacey Act, which was originally scheduled to be implemented in September 2009, was postponed until September 1 this year, and began to apply to particleboard, fiberboard, etc. Wood products are effective, and the Lacey Act also requires instructions to increase the origin of the wood.

This is exactly what some domestic small businesses are unwilling to disclose. Su Ming, deputy director of the Foreign Cooperation Center of the State Forestry Administration, said: “There are NGO organizations that 85% of the global timber trade may be illegal.”

Since paper is usually produced from wood pulp at the international level, paper and wood are both within the scope of the two major laws. Once these laws are strictly implemented, a large number of SMEs in the country will have to look for qualified suppliers, or increase the cost of origin certification, affecting homes, wood products, paper and other industries.

However, China has been arguing against this potential trade barrier built by Europe and the United States. Su Ming said: "The domestic wood processing industry must be harvested, transported, and processed to complete the three certificates, which actually have the requirements for origin certification. The laws of other countries, after all, are not internationally recognized."

In October 2009, Lin Tianhe, China’s first forest certification agency, was established in Beijing to try to establish China’s own certification standards. Su Ming stated that the current certification system is still in the experimental stage. “As long as the company has needs, the country will certainly support it.”

In this regard, Su Ming also believes that: "Europe and the United States law is the same for all companies, may be for large companies, it will indeed be an opportunity for industrial integration."