Trump announces plans for the US to buy potash fertilizers from Belarus

Trump called such a price «very good news» for American farmers and ranchers and linked the possible deal to the ongoing US-Canada trade dispute.

Lukashenko, in turn, said that Belarus had redirected supplies to the east. According to him, even if access to Western markets were restored, the country would not have free volumes because all raw material has already been «contracted».

The US depends almost entirely on imports of potash fertilizers, with nearly 80% of those imports coming from Canada and another 12% from Russia.

Belarus is one of the world’s largest producers of potash fertilizers, alongside Canada, Russia, and China. Minsk’s ability to supply potash to Western markets is limited by sanctions imposed over the brutal suppression of the Belarusian protests of 2020 and the Lukashenko regime’s complicity in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

After Donald Trump was reelected to a second term, the US began to normalize relations with Lukashenko and lifted sanctions on Belarus’s potash industry. At the same time, EU sanctions on imports of Belarusian potash remain in place.

Sources

• Material: meduza.io