Overview
- Pressure on the administration spiked during a Thursday Fox Business interview in which host Stuart Varney pressed Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to spell out a concrete plan for easing fertilizer costs.
- Rollins said the White House is holding daily talks with fertilizer CEOs and outlined short-term steps that include temporary Jones Act relief for coastal shipping, new import lines from Venezuela, faster permitting, and an EPA easing of diesel exhaust rules tied to urea.
- She added that officials are considering reviving the Biden-era Fertilizer Production Expansion Program to boost domestic output and said USDA will announce short- and long-term actions soon.
- Farmers report severe sticker shock, with an American Farm Bureau survey finding many cannot afford all the fertilizer they need this season, and market tracker DTN reporting urea prices were 27% higher in April than in March.
- The squeeze reflects disrupted flows through the Strait of Hormuz, which carries large shares of global urea and ammonia, and analysts also point to earlier U.S. phosphate tariffs that studies say lifted domestic prices by roughly 28% to 34%.