Duty-Free Phosphate Fertilizer from Morocco

Trump declares emergency, authorizes temporary duty-free importation of phosphate fertilizer from Morocco.

[DECLARATION OF EMERGENCY AND AUTHORIZATION FOR TEMPORARY DUTY FREE IMPORTATION OF PHOSPHATE FERTILIZER FROM MOROCCO] BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1. Fertilizers are an essential component of agriculture and food production. Producers of corn, soybeans, wheat, and a variety of other crops need phosphate fertilizers to ensure strong crop yields to feed the population. Food production is critical to human health, farm security, and to the function of major sectors of the economy, and even isolated interruptions in food production can have serious health and economic consequences. Robust and reliable food production is therefore critical to the economic and national security of the United States. 2. During the planting and growing season, soil and crops require critical nutrients, including the phosphorus supplied by phosphate fertilizers, and in the coming months, farmers will apply more than half of annually consumed phosphate fertilizers between the fall and very early spring prior to next spring’s planting. To ensure a stable food supply, predictable and timely sources of phosphate fertilizer must be procured to meet United States demand, which requires adequate supply of phosphate fertilizer, a critical type of plant food. 3. Global supply chains for phosphate fertilizer and fertilizer inputs, including imports of such products into the United States, have been disrupted in recent months by, among other things, conflicts in fertilizer-producing regions as well as trade actions taken by major fertilizer-producing countries. For example, the United States’ largest foreign source of phosphate fertilizer has experienced supply chain disruption, placing additional pressure on the farm economy and the production of certain categories of domestic food. Persistent threats to the global fertilizer supply chain, which create rapid price increases and procurement challenges, require the United States to procure phosphate fertilizer from diversified foreign sources to mitigate the significant risk of harm to the agricultural food production of the United States. 4. Currently, United States production of phosphate fertilizer is insufficient to support domestic agricultural food production after accounting for exports. The Federal Government is working with the private sector to expand domestic fertilizer manufacturing capacity, but those efforts will take time to increase the supply materially. Immediate action is necessary and appropriate to ensure in the interim that United States farmers have access to a sufficient and timely supply of phosphate fertilizers during the planting and growing season, to ensure a stable domestic crop supply, and to meet our food production needs. 5. Producers in countries such as the Kingdom of Morocco can supply phosphate fertilizers to the United States without disruption at this time. It is imperative to immediately facilitate importation of phosphate fertilizers from the Kingdom of Morocco to mitigate the significant risk to the agricultural food production of the United States, to safeguard