Wrong.
He could sell it to a mill to build bridges, homes or anything else none of which could be built without his tree.
The wealth is in the tree, the profits at each step beyond the sale are limited then to value added in processing etc or even more limited at the wholesale/retail end.
That is why China and the US both became so enormously wealthy so quickly.
We both took things out of the ground, water, and sky and created things of great value with them and sold them overseas.
If you keep every aspect from extraction to final production in your country you keep all of the profits from adding value at each step of the way.
Walmart will do lucky to clear 10% on the resale and China keeps about 80% because essentially all they are out is transportation and they’ll even get the profit from that using their own ships to transport it to the US.
