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Balanced Reporting. Trusted Insights.
Wednesday, April 02, 2025
A bipartisan group of senators and House members is urging the International Trade Commission to consider farmer voices as it decides what to do about Moroccan phosphate imports.
USDA took a key step Thursday in rolling out its new $1.3 billion international trade initiative, the Regional Agricultural Promotion Program, and unveiled plans for trade missions next year to Vietnam, India, South Korea, Canada, Colombia and Morocco.
The Commerce Department is sharply cutting its duty on Moroccan phosphate fertilizer products to just 2.12%, spurring optimism that imports will resume and provide American farmers with more supply options and better prices.
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.
Dozens of national and state agricultural groups are beseeching the Biden administration to consider high fertilizer costs that are weighing down farmers as the International Trade Commission and Commerce Department weigh their options on continuing to levy duties on imports of Moroccan phosphate products.
A key Moroccan fertilizer company, bolstered by rising calls from farmers and lawmakers for more supplies of imported phosphate products, sees a pathway back to the U.S. market potentially in time for spring application season.
Eleven farm-state Republican lawmakers from the Senate and House are asking the Commerce Department to reverse a preliminary decision that would significantly raise the countervailing duty on Russian phosphate fertilizer.
The Moroccan phosphate giant OCP got a major boost to its effort to reenter the U.S. phosphate market at the U.S. Court of International Trade, but company executives say there may be more challenging legal battles ahead in a campaign that has fertilizer-dependent farmers on their side.
Barges full of Moroccan phosphate that arrive in New Orleans are still moving up the Mississippi River, but that fertilizer isn’t for U.S. farmers. Countervailing duties the U.S. slapped on Moroccan phosphate giant OCP last year make that impossible, so the much-needed farm input is going to Canada instead.
