SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — If you rip off the walls of any housing development in the United States, you'll probably find wooden planks called lumber.
"There's a lot of lumber used in housing construction it's the mother's milk of construction," said Stephen Russell, President and CEO of the San Diego Housing Federation.
Experts estimate around 30% of softwood lumber in the U.S. comes from Canada. It's one of three countries President Donald Trump has threatened with tariffs unless leaders put an end to illegal immigration and fentanyl.
"How are these tariffs going to impact your job?"
"We're all going to be impacted," Russell said. "The actual rate of production will drop. A lot of projects simply won't pencil out mathematically and may not be initiated."
Russell says a tariff on Canadian imports could increase the cost of lumber and eventually slow down new developments. He knows of more than 50 affordable housing projects in the works that could cost millions more.
"Everything under construction right now we would expect will continue and be completed. But new projects won't be started and projects in the early stages will get half started and run out of money."
On Monday, Trump said he would hold off on imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico for the next thirty days, leaving Russell and other developers walled up in uncertainty.
"Any uncertainty, banks tighten up their money. Builders take fewer contracts, workers make decisions about whether or not to stay in the trades. All of these things are affected by these external conditions and you can't just turn this on and off like a light switch and go back to normal."
Russell believes this back and forth is the enemy of production.
