A bipartisan group of lawmakers is following the lead of some of the nation's most influential farm groups, which banded together earlier this month to ask the Commerce Department to reduce or eliminate the duty on key imports of phosphate fertilizers from Morocco.
Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., together with 14 other senators and 24 members of the House, sent a letter this week to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to stress that reducing the tariff “would provide welcomed relief for U.S. farm suppliers and their customers, American family farms.”
The U.S. Court of International Trade recently ruled that Commerce made errors when it calculated a duty to be imposed on phosphate imports from the Moroccan company OCP. The duty was first set at 19.97% and then lowered to 14.49%; but that did not satisfy farm groups, and OCP continues to hold back from exporting most of its phosphate products like diammonium phosphate, or DAP, and monoammonium phosphate, or MAP.
Without those imports, the U.S. has been forced to rely on other imports to make up for domestic supply shortfalls, according to the lawmakers, which include 17 members of the House and Senate Ag Committees.
U.S. demand for phosphate fertilizer his year will reach 7.4 million metric tons, the lawmakers said in the letter dated Oct. 24. The U.S. will need 2.7 million tons of imports to fully satisfy that demand.
“Since the imposition of (the countervailing duty) on Moroccan phosphate fertilizers in 2020, the supply options to meet U.S. farmers’ phosphate needs have significantly decreased,” the lawmakers wrote. “This situation has contributed to the high volatility of fertilizer prices overall, increased costs of a critical nutrient, and exposed farmers to the risk of inadequate supply into the future, given the lack of sufficient domestic supply to meet U.S. farmers’ needs.”
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A separate Court of International Trade also ruled recently that the International Trade Commission used faulty facts and logic when it decided that OCP products were unfairly harming U.S. producers. CIT Judge Stephen Vaden, USDA's chief counsel during the Trump administration, remanded the case back to the Commission and ordered it to reach a new decision.
Kevin Kimm, CEO of OCP North America, told Agri-Pulse in a recent interview that he is counting on either Commerce to reduce its CVD calculation to virtually zero or ITC to reverse its decision that Moroccan phosphate imports are damaging to U.S. producers.
“American family farmers need a reliable, diverse supply of many agricultural inputs, including fertilizers,” the lawmakers said in the letter to Raimondo. “The administrative review and the response to the CIT remand present opportunities to address this situation and to properly consider the facts as to the amount of subsidies in this proceeding since its inception.”
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