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The US has demanded that the EU delay bans on cocoa, timber and hygiene products potentially linked to deforestation, arguing it would hurt US manufacturers.
The request, made in a letter to the European Commission seen by the Financial Times and dated May 30, comes seven months before the bloc is scheduled to implement the ban.
The law would require traders to provide documentation showing that imports from chocolate to furniture and livestock products were made without destroying any forests.
Gina Raimondo and Thomas Vilsack, the U.S. Commerce and Agriculture Secretaries and Trade Envoy Katherine Tai, said in the letter that the deforestation bill poses “critical challenges” for U.S. manufacturers.
“We therefore call on the European Commission to delay the implementation of this regulation and the subsequent enforcement of sanctions until these fundamental issues are resolved,” they said.
US timber traders have said they are considering curbs on EU export contracts because they cannot prove their paper does not come from deforested land.
Other trading partners, notably major palm oil producing countries Indonesia and Malaysia, have also urged Brussels to delay the implementation of the law.
The industries most affected by the regulation in the US, which is the EU’s second largest import partner, are the wood, paper and pulp industries. According to data from the US International Trade Commission, the EU imported approximately $3.5 billion worth of US forest products in 2022.
The law requires evidence that products come from land without deforestation after 2020, including a statement with geolocation data. However, the American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA) said it was “impossible” to comply because paper and pulp are made from sawmill residues and forest residues mixed from different sources.
“This makes it impossible to trace every single chip back to the original forest plot. Additionally, the technology required to monitor our fiber flow to meet this requirement does not currently exist,” AF&PA said.
It could impact specific products such as napkins and menstrual products, as the U.S. supplies 85 percent of the pulp used in those items globally, the company said.
In October, Tai wrote to 66 members of Congress asking her to highlight the problems facing US pulp and paper producers as a result of the EU’s deforestation law with Brussels.
“The EU regulation imposes impractical requirements that would unnecessarily restrict trade in products from low-risk countries that have responsibly managed supply chains, such as the United States,” the letter to Congress said.
There is also internal opposition within the EU. The bloc’s Development Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen and Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski called for a delay, as did most EU agriculture ministers, led by Austria, which also wanted to exempt small farmers from the rules.
The International Trade Center, a UN-backed body, said the law could cut small producers from developing countries who lack the technology to verify their goods were not grown on deforested land from the supply chain.
EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius pushed for the law, traveling to Latin America and African countries at the start of the year to “allay any concerns about the possible consequences”, he said in March.
The regulation calls for customs authorities to inspect 9 percent of products originating from countries with a “high risk” of deforestation and 3 percent from “standard risk” countries. Due to pressure from producer countries, the commission agreed that all countries would be classified as “standard risk” in the first instance.
The commission confirmed it had received the letter from the US administration and said it would respond in due course.