Vermont silviculturists and the folks who make Silverados may have more to bond over than one might expect. Namely: the tangle that President Donald Trump’s tariffs are creating for their products that travel back and forth across the Canadian border during manufacturing.

Oliver Pierson, the state’s director of forestry, and Katharine Servidio, manager of the forest economy program for the Vermont Department of Forests, Park and Recreation, mapped out that tangle for the House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry on Wednesday. 

As sawmill capacity in the U.S. has retracted, New England’s loggers have looked to Canada to process timber felled on this side of the border. Vermont has felt that loss acutely with the 2023 closure of a Bristol sawmill and the 2024 shuttering of one in Clarendon. A recent Seven Days story reported that an estimated 150 sawmills have closed across the state since 2000.

Vermont imported $52 million in sawmill and wood products from Canada in 2024, according to Pierson. The neighbor to the north is also Vermont’s biggest export market for sawlogs and hardwood.

Pierson and Servidio couldn’t put a number on it, but said “a high percentage” of Vermont lumber — especially softwood — goes to Canada, where it gets sawed and processed before it comes right back into the U.S. Once it’s back on this side of the border, the wood is crucial for expanding Vermont’s housing stock: softwoods are used for framing and walls in new construction while hardwoods are prime finishing material for floors, cabinets and the like (think maple, oak, ash). 

“So why would anyone think it was a good idea to tariff it going up and tariff it coming back if it was our product?” Rep. Richard Nelson, R-Derby, asked.

There is a case for bringing more milling back to America, Pierson said, but “it wouldn’t be tomorrow. It wouldn’t even be a year or two from now when we’d be able to stand up additional processing capacity.”

With a “long-view” on the industry, Servidio said she sees that tariffs can offer “a potential opportunity” to Vermont, but that can only come if there is more certainty on whether tariffs on forest products are here to stay. 

In the short term, Servidio and Pierson said that they expect that U.S. tariffs on lumber imported from Canada and retaliatory Canadian tariffs on Vermont timber will be debilitating for the logging industry in the state: “The key takeaway point here is if there is this trade war that’s protracted, it could be expected to put some U.S. loggers out of business,” Pierson said. “That’s on top of challenges that the industry is already facing for other reasons: climate change, market variability, (and) workforce issues.” 

Next week, the committee plans to hear from the Vermont Forest Products Association and, potentially, from lumber companies. The state should know by April 2 — next Wednesday — if those on-again, off-again U.S. tariffs on Canada and Mexico will, in fact, go into effect.

— Olivia Gieger

In the know

The Legislature and Gov. Phil Scott are currently locked in a heated political battle over the immediate future of the motel emergency housing program. Without legislative action, next week, on April 1, the program’s winter-weather rules will expire — triggering restrictions on how long unhoused people can stay. A new 80-day time limit enacted last year resulted in the evictions of more than 1,500 people from motels over the course of the fall. That restriction was waived for the winter months but is set to kick back in again on Tuesday.

Read more here about the current stalemate and the reactions of program participants staying at Colchester’s Motel 6. 

— Carly Berlin

The University of Vermont Health Network has reached a tentative agreement with the Green Mountain Care Board to resolve a dispute over the fact that the hospital network brought in roughly $80 million more patient revenue in the 2023 fiscal year than it was allowed to. 

Under a proposed settlement announced Tuesday, the network would pay $11 million to “non-hospital” primary care providers and $12 million to the insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield. It would also fund a team of consultants and an “independent liaison” to review the network’s finances and operations. 

The settlement also includes restrictions on bonuses paid out to hospital executives. In the 2026 fiscal year, at least half of executives’ bonuses would be tied to specific factors: reducing the usage of emergency departments, payments from New York hospitals to Vermont hospitals, and reducing prices charged to commercial health insurers and revenue from those insurers.

Read more about the settlement and the public discussion about the terms at Wednesday’s Green Mountain Care Board meeting here.

— Peter D’Auria

On the move

The Senate suspended its rules Wednesday afternoon to give both preliminary and final approval to H.2, a bill that would delay the full implementation of Vermont’s Raise the Age initiative for at least two more years, keeping 19-year-olds accused of misdemeanors and low level felonies under the jurisdiction of adult criminal court. 

The push was to get the bill to Gov. Phil Scott to sign before the current legal deadline for implementation, next Tuesday, April 1. The bill also would increase the age at which children can be charged with juvenile offenses from 10 to 12 years old. 

Also, on Wednesday, the Senate approved S.18, which would create a licensure process for freestanding birthing centers, exempt those facilities from the Green Mountain Care Board’s certificate of need process and require coverage by the state Medicaid program. In the same vein, on Tuesday, the chamber approved S.53, which would create a certificate program for doulas and require Medicaid to cover their services. 

In other action, the Vermont House gave preliminary approval to H.244, which would require the state to spend 70% of part of its advertising budget on in-state media outlets. The body also approved H.401, which provides licensing exemptions for food manufacturers grossing less than $30,000, as well as H.474, which would make several significant changes to Vermont election law. 

— Kristen Fountain

Visit our 2025 bill tracker for the latest updates on major legislation we are following.