Approximately 30 Republican members of Congress are urging the Biden administration to lift import duties on phosphate fertilizer from Morocco and place a moratorium on any new duties on UAN imports from Trinidad and Tobago.
A July 14 letter signed by 31 members of Congress, including senior lawmakers on the House and Senate agriculture committees, said the nation’s farmers are facing high fertilizer prices, tight fertilizer supply, and rising inflation, threatening food security.
“Our country’s farmers and agricultural producers are making decisions on what to plant today based on fertilizer prices rather than typical market fundamentals,” the letter states. “Coupled with inflation at the highest it has been in 41 years and a Consumer Price Index for food up 14.6%, the rising cost of fertilizer will increase food insecurity and geopolitical tensions domestically and abroad.”
The letter follows the final affirmative determinations in June by the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) in antidumping (AD) and countervailing duty (CVD) investigations of UAN imports from Russia and Trinidad (GM June 24, p. 1). DOC and the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) initiated their investigations in July 2021 in response to petitions filed by CF Industries Holdings Inc. (GM July 2, 2021).
The ITC made an affirmative preliminary determination in August 2021 and is scheduled to make its final determination on July 18, 2022. If the ITC’s final determination is affirmative, then DOC will issue AD/CVD orders on UAN imports from Russia and Trinidad, which will remain in place for at least five years.
The DOC and ITC last year (GM March 12, 2021) issued AD/CVD orders on imports of phosphate fertilizer from Morocco and Russia in response to a complaint filed by The Mosaic Co. on June 26, 2020 (GM June 26, 2020).
While noting that the U.S. is a “major producer” of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizer, the letter from Republican lawmakers said U.S. farmers “still significantly rely on imports” to meet fertilizer demand for crop production.
“While under normal circumstances, action by the Commerce Department and the ITC in the form of duties may be warranted. We do not want foreign governments to distort trade with the U.S.,” the letter states. “However, we certainly are not in normal circumstances. Duties on some of our most reliable trading partners is the last thing we need amid a global food crisis.”
Referring to the fertilizer duties as “inflationary tariffs,” the lawmakers said fertilizer supply and availability in the U.S. is “at a crossroads where farmers are applying lower-than-recommended soil nutrient rates for fear they cannot break even.” The result, the letter states, is that productivity will decline.
“The bottom line is that fertilizer is critical to national security and national defense,” the letter concludes. “Its affordability is also critical to wrangling out-of-control inflation. As such, we strongly encourage you to take immediate action to waive duties on fertilizer imports from Morocco and Trinidad and Tobago.”