Marshall Helmberger

Anyone paying attention to the news over the past 60 days is undoubtedly trying to adjust to an administration that seems designed to keep everyone off balance and uncertain. It’s a recipe for the kind of drama that sustains reality television and, as is the case with most such cheap TV fare, there’s very little reality involved.
We’ve seen an endless stream of executive orders coming from the Trump White House in these first seven weeks — a number that surpasses any previous president. Combined with the dismissal of tens of thousands of federal employees and the elimination of entire agencies by Elon Musk’s DOGE, the administration is portraying Trump as a man of action who is taking his election as opportunity to reshape the world to his liking.
But there’s far less to many of these orders than meets the eye and many are directly at odds with reality. Take Trump’s March 1 order ostensibly designed to increase domestic timber production as a way to reduce dependence on Canadian lumber, issued just days ahead of additional tariffs on goods from north of the border.
Trump’s action garnered headlines across the country and likely pleased many of his supporters. It’s a made-for-TV storyline, which the media will have forgotten all about long before the reality — namely that Trump’s order will have little or no impact — sets in.
In fact, increasing American timber and wood products production is certainly possible, but not without a strategic plan for how to achieve that objective, and a stable and consistent set of policies that builds confidence among investors.
Keep in mind, the wood products sector is extremely capital intensive. Starting even a mom-and-pop logging operation requires investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Opening a new lumber or paper mill takes tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, depending on the size. No one in their right mind is going to make those kinds of investments without confidence that the market conditions that might make that investment favorable today will continue for the foreseeable future. With Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs and almost daily economic policy gyrations (now he says a recession wouldn’t be so bad), the only seeming certainty is never-ending chaos. When even the pro-Republican Wall Street Journal editorial page is raising alarm bells surrounding the actions of a GOP president, you know the investment community is worried.
The U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management could double or triple their offerings of timber tomorrow, but unless you have the infrastructure in place — from loggers to mills to transportation — that timber isn’t going anywhere. The trees don’t cut themselves.
What’s more, timber sales don’t happen without foresters, and the Trump Administration is firing them by the hundreds. I spoke recently to a high official on the Superior National Forest (who I’m not naming because free speech is not allowed for federal workers under this administration), who noted that on some districts, virtually the entire timber program had been eliminated by Musk’s job cuts. An administration that was operating with strategic vision would be connecting the dots here and recognizing that some of their very own actions are in direct opposition to their stated goals.
Trump suggests through his order that he wants to see more wood products mills. Yet, his tariffs on steel products are making the very materials that companies would need to build those plants substantially more expensive. And assuming Trump follows through on his tariffs on Canadian energy exports, the cost of diesel will rise, substantially raising the cost of operations for loggers in border areas.
It’s no different than his “drill, baby, drill” mantra. As the Independent Petroleum Association of America recently reported, Trump’s new tariffs on steel and aluminum products are hampering the oil and gas sector, which boomed under President Biden. “The American oil and natural gas industry hinges on the availability of steel — particularly for well construction, surface management, and for pipelines to gather and safely move its product to market,” notes the IPAA on its website. “Unfortunately, the implications of these new trade policies can hinder the progress of any Energy Dominance agenda,” concludes the group.
An administration that was thinking strategically would endeavor to actually understand the industries they claim to want to support and would implement policies designed to achieve those goals.
That, however, requires the kind of detailed policy work that Trump abhors. It requires an actual concern for these industries, rather than a focus on endless self-aggrandizement, which is the hallmark of this president. With Trump, it’s all about the invented story line, which makes each day of this administration like just another episode of “The Apprentice,” designed to make Trump look good for the cameras.
The facts on the ground, the reality behind the cameras, couldn’t matter less. With this president, it’ all just for show.