Trump says US is working on a large potash purchase from Belarus
Trump says Belarusian potash would cost less than supply from Canada, the top current source for US farmers
Published
President Trump said the United States is working on a large deal to buy potash from Belarus, and said Belarusian potash would be cheaper than Canadian supply.
The remarks follow the removal of US sanctions on Belarusian producer Belaruskali in December 2025, after talks between Trump's special envoy John Coale and Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko that also included the release of political prisoners, according to Bloomberg reporting cited by AgWeb. EU sanctions on Belarusian potash remain in place, and Belarus has no seaports of its own, so its exports still move through Russian Baltic terminals or by rail to China, according to Mining.com. State-owned Belaruskali controls about a fifth of the global potash market, Mining.com reported, and is counted alongside Russia's Uralkali and North American producers Nutrien and Mosaic as one of the four largest suppliers worldwide.
A document sent by US officials to Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine said American firms are interested in buying and shipping Belarusian potash once sanctions were lifted, but that any such trade would need to run through EU countries on Belarus's border or through Ukraine to avoid Russia, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Trump has previously raised the idea of tariffs on Canadian fertilizer, pointing to how much of the potash used by American farmers comes from Canada, Michigan Farm News reported.
The potash proposal is a small piece of a week otherwise dominated by geopolitical maneuvering, an energy supply shock and Federal Reserve tightening. Diesel prices have already jumped to $6.45 and markets are unsettled by rate increases and tariff uncertainty. A cheaper source of potash would trim agricultural input costs at the margin, but it does not touch the inflation and energy pressures now driving the broader market stress.