Republican U.S. Senator Tom Cotton has joined a group of U.S. lawmakers in voicing strong opposition to the European Union’s Deforestation-Free Regulation (EUDR), arguing that it places unfair burdens on American industries and threatens billions of dollars in exports. In a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, Cotton and his colleagues warned that the EU’s stringent new rules could severely impact the U.S. forest products industry by imposing compliance requirements that are nearly impossible to meet.
The EUDR, designed to ensure that commodities like timber, soy, and palm oil entering the EU do not contribute to deforestation, mandates that companies provide geolocation data tracing products back to individual land plots. For the American forestry sector, which relies heavily on wood chips and sawmill residues that are often mixed from various sources, meeting these traceability demands presents a significant challenge. Critics argue that the regulation fails to recognize the well-established sustainability practices already in place in the U.S., where forest growth has outpaced harvests for decades.
The U.S. does not contribute to global deforestation. The burden the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) places on U.S. forest products producers will not achieve the EU’s stated policy goal. https://t.co/plyQHQtCpP https://t.co/RIn4To4U6S
— AF&PA (@ForestandPaper) March 21, 2025
Another major concern is the requirement for detailed disclosure of land ownership and supply chain data, raising fears that sensitive business information could be exposed. Industry leaders worry that such transparency rules could disrupt long-standing business relationships and introduce legal risks for American landowners and timber producers.
The U.S. forest products industry, which employs more than 920,000 people directly and supports an additional two million jobs indirectly, stands to suffer major losses under the new EU mandate. Exports of U.S. wood and paper products to the European market amount to approximately $3.5 billion annually, and Cotton’s coalition warns that failure to address these regulatory barriers could result in job losses and economic strain on rural communities dependent on forestry.
Cotton and his colleagues are urging the Biden administration to push back against the EUDR by engaging with EU officials to ensure that existing American sustainability standards are recognized as equivalent. They argue that without such recognition, U.S. producers will be unfairly excluded from European markets, while competitors in other regions may gain an advantage despite having weaker environmental protections.
EUDR may also play a role in the ongoing trade war between the EU and the U.S. In recent years, the EU introduced a whole host of new EU regulations that impose bureaucracy on trading partners. This includes requirements for importers to map out their own supply chains, enshrined in the EU’s CSDDD directive, but also the EUDR, which already alerted the Biden administration.
Before Brazil and the U.S. complained about EUDR, the regulation has angered Malaysia, a major exporter of palm oil, which is annoyed at the fact that despite its own progress in the area of deforestation—something that was praised by NGOs—the EU still refuses to recognise the Malaysian deforestation standard MSPO as equivalent.
The UK, on the contrary, does so. A new update of Malaysia’s MSPO standard is even stricter than European standards, reinforcing the country’s point. The Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) 2.0 certification is fully capable of meeting the requirements set by the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), MSPO chief executive officer Mohamed Hafizin Mohamed Tajudin has stressed.
The proposed regulations by the EU would harm Arkansas businesses and put workers at risk, while failing to combat deforestation.
The entire Arkansas delegation shares these concerns.https://t.co/g44vusJAgY
— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) March 14, 2025
This latest trade dispute over environmental regulation adds to growing tensions between the U.S. and the EU, which have also clashed over issues such as the EU’s proposed Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), another policy that critics say unfairly targets American industries. With the U.S. poised for another round of trade negotiations, Cotton’s position underscores broader concerns about the EU’s regulatory approach and its impact on transatlantic commerce.
As discussions continue, the U.S. paper and pulp industry is looking to the federal government for support in ensuring that American products are not sidelined in global markets. With increasing pressure from lawmakers like Cotton, the EUDR is shaping up to be another flashpoint in U.S.-EU trade relations.
Copyright picture: By Southern Arkansas University – Debate 10.4.12, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64711579