On April 2nd, the United States announced that it would impose "reciprocal tariffs" on Chinese goods exported to the United States. In the face of this typical unilateral and bullying practice of the US side that does not conform to international trade rules and seriously damages China's legitimate rights and interests, on April 4th, China successively expressed its stance and announced countermeasures: China announced that it would impose a 34% tariff on all goods imported from the United States. Then, on April 8th, Eastern Time in the United States, the Trump administration signed the latest executive order, directly increasing the originally planned 34% tariff on Chinese goods to 84%. Coupled with the previously accumulated 20% tax increase, the final tariff rate soared to an unprecedented 104%. The trade war between the two sides has intensified. Under the shadow of this trade war, the timber market has been in turmoil recently, especially the North American timber market, where the panic sentiment is quite strong. During the process of visiting the timber market, the reporter learned that affected by the trade war, the North American timber market is currently extremely unstable, and the spot prices of North American timber have thus shown irrational fluctuations. For example, the prices of black walnut and white oak have increased significantly, with the increases being about 2,000 yuan per cubic meter and 1,000 yuan per cubic meter respectively, and the spot inventory of cherry has been quickly cleared out. For other timber species such as ash, the prices have not shown obvious changes for the time being. Some industry insiders said that at the present stage, the North American timber market is almost in a state of "panic". For sawmills, the previous suspension of the import of American logs has almost left them with no work to do. Many processing plants have to suspend their operations. For distributors, the 34% import tariff has basically blocked the import route of American lumber. After all, the high tariffs will greatly increase their import costs and also make American lumber lose all its competitive advantages in the domestic market. In this situation, traders can only rely on their inventories to keep their businesses running. However, the inventory cannot last for a long time, and once the inventory is exhausted, merchants will be in an awkward situation of having no goods to sell. Other market insiders said that in the short term, affected by the imposed tariffs, the domestic North American timber market will face the dilemma of an expanding supply gap, which will in turn lead to frequent price changes. This will undoubtedly bring huge cost pressures to downstream industries such as construction and furniture. In the long run, reducing or even giving up the dependence on American timber and turning to seek alternatives is an important issue that North American timber merchants must consider. However, for distributors who have been operating in the North American timber market for many years, it is not something that can be achieved in a short time to switch to other timber species. This is a great challenge, but at the same time, it is also an opportunity.