Dustin Jalbert

Meant to post this here yesterday.

Viewpoint we posted a few days ago for subscribers, but have decided to post without the paywall.

Check it out!

www.fastmarkets.com/insights/doe...

*habitat

Hard to say, but for reference, here's how harvesting has changed on federal lands over the decades. A dramatic drop since the 1990's.

Loosening permitting and habit protection rules even a little could move the needle.

It's quite complicated though, so hard to say.

Seems bad!

Can imagine some things shaking out inflation dynamics in the coming months but for the time being inflation looks to be headed toward 2% as lags and quirks fall out of the 12-month window.

Lags in housing and wages + stock market outperformance account for 45 of the remaining 55bp overshoot

Sorry *converted product is sourced from

Sounds like they will try to crack down on fabricated steel and aluminum products too. But we'll see how successful that is, feels hugely inflation even beyond construction

Yeah, steel likely shows up in rebar, components (think truss systems) and then potentially appliances, furnishings etc to finish a home, although depends on where the concrete product is sourced from.

That's just on top line total construction costs I'm guessing? Nonresidential/apartment construction sees a bigger impact than single family residential construction?

If the tariff is on fabricated steel, double those numbers.

A 20% tariff on mill steel, after all shipping, fabrication, delivery and labor for installation is = 5% cost increase on structural steel installed. That is = to 0.5% increase to total building final cost.

So how much are these steel and aluminum tariffs gonna add to construction costs @edzarenski.bsky.social?

I would be surprised if there aren't exceptions on milling your own wood for constructing a personal dwelling. My father has built many homes, several with his own milled framing lumber...don't think it was ever an issue as long as dimensions met code.

Selling commercially would be a issue though.

Yeah, agreed. Even just to illustrate. I think he overestimates 1) the number of people with wood lots and necessary equipment to operate a sawmill 2) people willing to put in the work to saw your own lumber (it's literally back breaking work on a small portable sawmill)

It's hard to say how much of this very small scale sawmill operations are out there operating. But, at best we are talking a few percentage points on top of the commercial capacity base (which we can measure pretty well)

And there's no way we have more spare capacity than post GFC. My two cents.

First time posting my actual work on Bluesky.

I updated my Lumber & Logs charts last night, with 2023 FAO stats. 🧵

Starting with Softwood Lumber Production...

JOLTS:

1/ Tentative evidence that labor market stabilization may be underway. Hires and quits haven't fallen much since late summer.

We've had headfakes like this before so I'm cautious, but stabilization is my baseline for 2025 (this is Dec 2024 data).

Good summary on the agricultural commodities impacted if 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico do happen.

Yours truly also makes a late appearance!

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Key takeaway from today seems to be that team "Trump isn't serious about tariffs" probably right.

All the bluster and grief directed at Canada just to turn around and punt on tariffs when Canada largely just reaffirmed pledges from December seems pretty telling.

What am I missing?

BREAKING: US tariffs on Canada paused for 30 days, Trudeau says

10-year yields have been falling, probably because Trump is cutting spending, raising taxes, and hurting economic growth:

Gotta lock in those durable goods prices before they shoot up on Tuesday I guess.

Yeah, fair enough. Wasn't sure if it was something crypto-specific.

What's the catalyst? $TRUMP taking a nosedive?

So what's going on with crypto, you guys?

That's ultimately what he cares about. I'm not saying I agree with it, but that's clearly a motivating factor for him while in office

Stonks tank enough and he'll turn the bus around. Just a question of what's the pain threshold

So when's he walking it all back? Seems like the next logical question?

If there is any doubt that tariffs are passed through to consumers, the cost of propane to heat my house just went up by the amount of the tariff

Groupings might need to
be tweaked a bit, but US economic policy in a nutshell rn.