WASHINGTON – Senate Agriculture Committee member and lifelong family farmer Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), along with Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zack Nunn, are calling on the Department of Commerce (DOC) to lower countervailing duties (CVDs) on phosphate fertilizers from Morocco. The push was prompted by the Court of International Trade’s (CIT) recent remand of DOC’s subsidy calculations.

“We ask that Commerce carefully consider and follow the CIT’s decision in Commerce’s recalculation of the subsidy amount, both in its final determination in the investigation and its administrative review,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter to DOC Secretary Gina Raimondo. “Reducing the subsidy rate would provide welcomed relief for U.S. farm suppliers and their customers, American family farms.”

Grassley and his colleagues cited promising preliminary findings from DOC on potentially reducing the subsidy rate by about 5.5 percent. Since the Biden DOC imposed CVDs on Moroccan phosphate fertilizers, their supply across the United States has decreased, placing an undue financial burden on farmers. Grassley hammered the administration on this very issue last year, as it swooped in to ease duties impacting the solar industry while enacting policies that would drive up costs for American agricultural producers. 

Leading this latest bipartisan, bicameral effort are Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and Reps. Tracey Mann (R-Kan.) and Jim Costa (D-Calif.). Read the full letter and list of signatories HERE.  

Background:

Soaring fertilizer prices and agricultural input costs – both of which have been exacerbated by high inflation – are among the top concerns Grassley hears during his 99 county meetings. Grassley has discussed the problem in conversations with Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig, the Iowa Farm Bureau, the Farm Credit Services of America and others. 

Grassley and his Agriculture Committee colleagues previously urged the International Trade Commission to address strains on the fertilizer supply chain. He separately requested that Attorney General Merrick Garland investigate possible anticompetitive activity and market manipulation in the fertilizer industry. 

-30-