In late September, an interagency US committee issued a report via the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) that deemed that while Peru has made valuable headway in its forest management efforts, more work remains in ensuring the legality of its timber supply chain can be properly ensured and verified. The statement was released on behalf of the US Timber Committee, which was set up as part of the US-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement, and its assessment built on an earlier review by Lima that found similar results. The reviews focused specifically on efforts to verify the legality of three timber shipments from Peru to the United States in early 2017. Timber from a particular Peruvian exporter, Inversiones La Oroza, has been banned in the US since late 2017 due to concerns over the ability to verify the integrity of the supply chain, in a move deemed “unprecedented” at the time. (See Bridges Weekly, 26 October 2017 ) The document released last month says that while two shipments were in line with Peru’s domestic laws, there were challenges in the verification of the third. The US Timber Committee report also outlines a series of suggestions for future work by...