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NCGA says lower phosphate duties not end of battle

The U.S. Department of Commerce lowered import duties on Moroccan phosphate fertilizer last week, but an agriculture group says the reduction might not last.

Nancy Martinez with the National Corn Growers Association tells Brownfield the new import duty could go up or down later this year. “(The Department of) Commerce is actually going through a remand process to recalculate the duties. That was ordered by the Court of International Trade. That announcement will come out in December, so the administrative review process is separate from that process, so I’ll be watching closely to those numbers in December as well.”

Martinez says NCGA is continuing to advocate for lower fertilizer duties because farmers need lower prices. “From 2020 to 2022, phosphate prices increased over 230 percent, so as farmers are trying to, you know, try to get back to kind of a regular order of business, they’re going to be looking for all sorts of opportunities on the pricing side to make their business work.”

Martinez says NCGA is also watching fertilizer supply chains elsewhere in the world including European nitrogen production which could be influenced by conflicts in the Middle East.