Plywood Duties Land, Diesel Spikes — and the Mid-Year Price Reports Start Dropping

The Big Story: Imported Plywood Just Got Priced Out

The trade case we've been tracking all year is now official. On July 21, the Commerce Department's final determinations on hardwood and decorative plywood hit the Federal Register: Chinese plywood receives a 187% dumping margin plus roughly 89% in countervailing duties, Vietnamese plywood 90%, and Indonesian product up to roughly 85% — with duties on Chinese entries reaching back to December 2025 under a critical-circumstances finding. One step remains: the International Trade Commission's injury vote, expected around early September. If it affirms — and at these margins that's the likely path — the duty orders lock in.

Why this matters to a log seller in Appalachia: domestic plywood and veneer mills are the buyers of veneer-grade oak, maple, and cherry logs, and they just gained real pricing room against imports that had been undercutting them for years. Veneer-log demand was already the bright spot in the Kentucky survey earlier this summer; this gives it policy support heading into fall. If you're sorting logs, the case for pulling your veneer candidates out of the sawlog pile — and pricing them separately — just got stronger. Not sure what qualifies? The free AI Log Grader flags veneer-potential logs from photos.

Diesel: Up 34 Cents in One Week

The national on-highway diesel average jumped to $5.13 a gallon for the week of July 20 — up 33.8 cents in a single week and $1.32 over a year ago, per the federal survey. Behind the spike: renewed Mideast tensions, Russia's diesel-export ban, and distillate inventories sitting at seasonal lows. Southeast trade press already has haul lanes quoted up 30%-plus versus earlier this year.

At these numbers, freight math decides whether a load makes money. A 100-mile haul that penciled out in June looks different at $5.13 diesel — quote freight-adjusted if you're selling, and reprice your lanes before committing if you're hauling. Landed price at the mill gate is the number that matters, and mills will push haul costs back onto suppliers wherever they can. If you need hauling lined up, the log hauling directory lists carriers by region.

Michigan's Mid-Year Report Landed — and It Ran Hot

The first of the mid-year state price reports is out: Michigan's DNR posted its July stumpage report covering sales through June 30. Statewide weighted averages on state-forest timber sales:

Source: Michigan DNR stumpage price report, July 2026 edition (state-forest sales, 12 months through June 30, 2026). These are stumpage (standing-timber) prices — not delivered-log prices. Delivered prices typically run well above stumpage; see the price guide for delivered ranges.

The headline isn't the levels — it's the bidding. Winning bids ran 27–46% above the DNR's advertised minimums on oak and maple, well past the 15–25% cushion the state normally builds in. The report itself reads that as a rising market. That's a directional signal worth carrying into your own negotiations, whichever state you cut in.

Meanwhile, the reports most of our readers actually price against — Kentucky's mid-year delivered-log report, Ohio State's July Timber Price Report, and WVU's Appalachian hardwood update — were still unpublished as of July 26. We check the source pages directly, and our price watchdog monitors seven official sources on autopilot. The week they drop, every price reference on the site gets refreshed, same as we did with the University of Kentucky survey in June.

The Barrel Glut Gets a Courtroom Subplot

New wrinkle in the whiskey slowdown: the court-appointed receiver running Uncle Nearest filed suit on July 18, alleging the company's former CFO submitted falsified barrel-inventory reports to support a credit line that grew to $67 million — meaning some of the "aging whiskey" that justified boom-era barrel buying may never have existed. (Those are allegations in an active case, not findings.) The receivership's asset sales keep dragging, and Independent Stave's Alabama cooperage still closes September 14.

Read it the way a log seller should: the bourbon side of white oak demand is not bouncing back this quarter. Stave-quality white oak is still commanding elevated prices — Kentucky's data had stave logs up ~15% year over year — but the demand engine behind those prices keeps losing cylinders. If you're holding stave-quality oak, the argument for selling into today's market rather than waiting on a barrel rebound keeps getting stronger.

Housing and Rates: No Help Coming

June new-home sales edged up to 628,000 annualized (+1.6% from May, still down 5.6% from last year), but builders are sitting on 9.3 months of unsold inventory — so don't expect a construction-side pull on hardwood anytime soon. Mortgage rates ticked up to 6.58%, framing-lumber futures closed the week around $654/MBF (up ~6% on the month), and the Federal Reserve meets July 28–29 with futures markets pricing roughly one-in-three odds of a rate hike — a hike, not a cut — this week, and better-than-even odds by September. If that lands, mortgage rates drift up into the fall building season. The hardwood dollar stays where it's been all year: remodel, specialty, export, and barrels — not new construction.

What to Watch Through August

• August 4: June trade data — the first update on China's log buying since May's +35% jump. If the truce-window purchases held through June, that's real support under walnut and white oak export demand.
• KDF, OSU, and WVU mid-year reports — due any week now. These set the delivered-price benchmarks the whole region quotes against.
• ~Early September: the plywood injury vote — the last step before the duty orders lock in.
• August–October: Canadian softwood duty finals — combined rates around 25% pending; a softwood story, but it feeds the general lumber-price floor.
• October 1: the Section 232 hardwood report — Commerce owes the President a report on whether national-security tariffs should extend to hardwood timber and lumber imports. That's the single biggest policy item on this industry's horizon; we'll cover it the day it lands.