China's Forest Product Trade under the EUDR: Impact Projection, Welfare Loss, and Response Path Selection

Employing Global Trade Analysis Project model to dynamically update macroeconomic and trade data to 2030, this study incorporates the compliance costs of the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) to simulate the responses of China’s forest product industry chain under three scenarios (low, baseline, and high compliance capability), and compares the mitigation effects of technological progress, export subsidies, and their combination. The results show that EUDR implementation significantly suppresses China's forest product output, imports, and exports, leading to a net loss in social welfare, with the loss negatively correlated with compliance capability. Pathway comparisons reveal that a standalone technological progress pathway achieves the best mitigation effect, promoting output recovery, optimizing trade structure, and improving social welfare; a standalone subsidy may distort resource allocation; the combined pathway underperforms the standalone technological progress pathway. Further analysis indicates that the processed forest products sector responds more strongly to technological interventions than the primary sector, and biased technological progress favoring the processing stage can amplify the mitigation effect. Based on the simulation results, a technology-centered, policy-coordinated response system should be established to transform external regulatory pressure into a driver for high-quality development of forest product trade.