Brazilian Pine Exports Shift to Argentina and Mexico

Timber that Brazilian mills can no longer place in the United States is moving to buyers in Mexico, Germany, and Vietnam, while Argentine rivals are pushing into the American market that those mills are losing. That is according to Marcelo Wiecheteck, Head of Strategic Development at forestry consultancy STCP, whose reading of the first half puts the American shortfall at US$351 million across Brazil’s seven main wood export lines, as reported by Forbes Brasil.

Shipments of pine sawnwood to the United States fell 28 per cent in a month to $8.1 million in March, while Mexico took the lead among buyers at $11.2 million, on the destination records Brazil publishes through Comex Stat. “Placing Brazilian production in another market is genuinely difficult,” Wiecheteck said in comments translated from Portuguese, and the placements are happening anyway, one product line at a time.

German, Mexican, and Swedish buyers took more Brazilian plywood across the same quarter, with purchases climbing from $5 million to $7.1 million in Germany, $3.5 million to $5.3 million in Mexico, and $800,000 to $2.5 million in Sweden, while Vietnam entered the top pine sawnwood destinations. Datamar reaches the same result from container bookings, putting January-to-April wood shipments to Spain up 113 per cent, Colombia up 100.4 per cent, and Mexico up 34.4 per cent, while the United States fell 31.2 per cent on its DataLiner count.

Argentina sits at the receiving end of the customer list rather than the cargo list, with the country’s timber federation counting sawn pine export volumes up 34.58 per cent across the first half while its domestic market stalled. “Exports are the only escape valve left to ease the paralysis in domestic consumption,” Gustavo Cetrángolo, the consultant behind FAIMA’s monthly industry report, told Argentina Forestal on 1 August, in comments translated from Spanish.

Mouldings bound for the American market climbed 16.65 per cent inside that Argentine total, largely in the Appearance Pine Board grade, with plywood jumping 93.59 per cent compared with the second half of 2025. Argentina’s largest sawmill already cuts for exactly this trade, with Austria’s HS Timber Group and Belgium’s Forestcape building the Virasoro plant in Corrientes to turn out 370,000 cubic metres of dried sawn timber a year, according to the joint venture.

“The export market exists, but we have inefficiencies,” Enrique Bongers, president of the Misiones timber association AMAYADAP, said of export demand his members cannot yet fully meet, in an interview with Primera Edición. Washington’s own tariff schedule sets Argentine mouldings at 10 per cent while the stacked duties on the Brazilian line reach 37.5 per cent, according to Brazil’s development ministry, the MDIC.

Factory owners date the lost ground to uncertainty more than to any single duty, with WoodFlow chief executive Gustavo Milazzo telling Forbes Brasil that Brazil keeps ceding space to direct competitors in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, and Mexico, leaving plants on frozen contracts, in the red, or on collective leave. “This insecurity is what leaves us out of the market,” Guilherme Ranssolin, chief executive of doors, plywood, and mouldings maker Randa, said on WoodFlow’s July podcast, in comments translated from Portuguese.

It comes as the MDIC published July trade figures on Thursday, showing American-bound exports down 5 per cent in value and 11.9 per cent in volume year on year, across a month in which the new charge ran for only 10 days. “It is not possible to attribute the whole July movement to the measure,” Herlon Brandão, the ministry’s trade statistics director, told reporters at the Thursday briefing, with the charge reaching full effect only from 29 July once cargo already at sea had cleared.

American buyers had already cut Brazilian wood orders by a third before July began, and exporters had rerouted at the wharf from the first quarter, when Mexico passed the United States as the Paranaguá Container Terminal’s leading destination. Mexico buys from Brazil and competes with it at once, leading the March pine sawnwood tables while sitting on WoodFlow’s own list of the rivals taking Brazilian space inside the United States.

Pine mouldings carry the hardest ceiling of any line measured, with 98 per cent of production built for a single market, according to the STCP data. Every other product on the destination tables has started the switch, and the one shaped most exactly for America is the one with nowhere else to go.