Resources and restructuring in the international solid wood products industry

In the 1980s, the U.S. solid wood products industry (SWPI) has undergone a significant restructuring, characterized by changes in product and process technology, the employment relation, the structure of markets, and industry geography. Concomitantly, the international SWPI has seen major shifts in the geography of production and trade, particularly in the Pacific Rim where Southeast Asian countries are increasing their share of processed exports and Japan has become a major importer of unprocessed raw materials from the U.S. Although the SWPI is a resource-oriented industry, industrial geographers and other industry analysts have largely ignored the ways in which the forest resource base has affected the restructuring of the SWPI. We attempt to rectify this omission, situating our analysis of the relationship between resources and industrial change within an explicitly nondeterministic epistemology that acknowledges the role of every social and natural process in constituting every other. This allows us to analyse the multidimensional impact of resources on the restructuring of the SWPI without resorting to environmental determinism or to the dilute reductionism of multicausal explanation. The emphasis on resources also allows us to identify ways to intervene in both industrial and natural processes to promote the retention of jobs in the U.S. SWPI and to retard or reverse the process of environmental degradation currently associated with the SWPI in Third World countries.