In “Cardboard-Box Demand Is Slumping. Why That’s Bad News for the Economy.”, the Wall Street Journal’s Ryan Dezember reports today that planned closures of paper mills by the end of this month means that:
the U.S. will have shed about 9% of its containerboard-production capacity in a span of about eight months. That is roughly twice the capacity that was lost during the recession in 2009.
Dezember quotes packaging analyst Adam Josephson as saying, “We’ve never seen anything like this magnitude of shuts”, i.e., of pulp-mill closures.
The recent closures affect coastal Georgia the most. In “Georgia timber industry faces struggle as large mills close”, Dave Williams of The Current quotes Devon Dartnell, head of forest utilization for the Georgia Forestry Commission, as saying “That equates to about 70 logging crews in Georgia that don’t have a place to take wood. They probably won’t make payroll next month.”
However, the closures affect the overall American economy as well, as reduced production will mean price increases in cardboard boxes and other paper products.
The slump in cardboard-box demand comes from several factors:
Trump’s tariffs and the uncertainty caused by the tariffs have weakened consumer spending, there have been sharp drops in home construction.
Amazon and other shippers are using boxes more efficently.
US cardboard producers are merging this year. The three largest producers now have a much bigger share of the market and are succeeding in cutting overall production and raising prices, thus decreasing demand.
The last factor seems to be the most important. Dezember writes:
Stock analysts say the capacity cuts should help them push prices higher next year even if demand continues to weaken.
Under the Trump administration, we can expect more monopolies and quasi-monopolies like this. It won’t be just paper mills. Trump’s antitrust chief Gail Slater said in August, “President Trump has made clear that America is open for business, and this includes dealmaking”, and in the second quarter of 2025 her team OKed mergers at a rate more than eight times that of the previous two years.
For more, see David Moore’s “Trump Admin Halts a String of Antitrust Cases, Approving Corporate Mergers” published in Sludge in late July. Moore’s quick summary is:
Trump regulators are waving through multibillion-dollar mergers, according to a new Public Citizen analysis, many for companies that were Trump-Vance inaugural donors.