The U.S. Court of International Trade on Nov. 22 granted a motion allowing agricultural trade groups – Agricultural Retailers Association, National Corn Growers Association (NGCA), American Soybean Association, National Cotton Council of America, and the National Sorghum Producers – to file an amicus curiae brief in a trade case that appealed U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) and U.S. International Trade Commission decisions imposing countervailing duties on U.S. phosphate imports from Morocco and Russia.
DOC calculated subsidy margins and corresponding duty rates of 47.05 percent on EuroChem and 9.19 percent on PhosAgro, as well as 17.2 percent for other Russian producers. DOC imposed a rate of 19.97 on phosphates from Morocco’s OCP.
Ultimately, OCP, EuroChem, and PhosAgro appealed to the U.S. Court seeking to quash the duties, while U.S. phosphate producer The Mosaic Co., the petitioner, appealed seeking to increase the duties (GM May 14, p. 1; June 4, p. 1; June 11, p. 1).
The Court said the proposed brief represented the actual users of the fertilizer, the farmers, i.e., those who will ultimately pay the price of the tariffs imposed. It said to suggest that the interests of a farmer who tills a couple thousand acres of farmland are in all respects represented by multinational corporations is to ignore economies of scale.
NGCA said Nov. 23 that farmers now face severe shortages and high fertilizer costs, and called on Mosaic to withdraw the petition. Likewise, it had the same request of CF Industries Holdings Inc., which filed a petition against imports of UAN from Russia and Trinidad & Tobago.
NCGA said the financial impact of tariffs are beginning to dim planting forecasts for 2022. It said fertilizer costs between 2021 and 2022 are projected to lower net incomes by 34 percent in Illinois, according to new projections from economists at the University of Illinois.
“The tariffs have created a financial hardship for farmers,” said NCGA President Chris Edgington. “Another year of shortages and tariffs will be devastating.”
The Court could render a decision in 2022.