US President Donald Trump took to social media over the weekend to warn fertilizer companies against using "monopoly" power to excessively raise US prices, as the US-Israel war with Iran continues to disrupt global fertilizer supply chains.
Trump said Saturday on his Truth Social platform he is "watching fertilizer prices CLOSELY" during what he described as the US "FIGHT FOR FREEDOM in Iran", adding that the administration "will not accept PRICE GOUGING from the fertilizer monopoly".
Trump's public comments prompted an indirect response from Mosaic, one of the largest US producers of phosphate and potash. Global fertilizer prices are shaped by "well documented market factors", and these forces — not individual producers — determine phosphate and potash pricing, Mosaic posted Saturday on various social media platforms.
Domestic and global fertilizer prices have risen sharply in recent months, reaching multi-year highs because of Iran's effective closure of the strait of Hormuz, where roughly 35pc of all seaborne urea transits through the Mideast Gulf. Similarly, 20-25pc of ammonia, 50pc of sulfur and 19pc of DAP and MAP global seaborne trade also transit the strait. Saudi Arabia is one of the leading suppliers of DAP and MAP to the US while Qatar is the same for urea.
DAP and MAP prices in New Orleans, Louisiana, (Nola) both traded as high as $770/st fob last week, the highest since September 2022, but less than last week's India DAP price of $865/t cfr, also the highest since September 2022. Nola urea values ended last week at $692/st fob, up from $405/st fob a year earlier and also the highest since September 2022. The 2022 peaks occurred when the conflict between Ukraine and Russia tightened global supplies, a situation similar to the current market.
The comments by Trump and Mosaic highlight the rising prominence of fertilizers in the political discourse surrounding the war in the Middle East as well as the administration's heightened political concerns as US farmers begin spring planting.
The USDA has been working with the Department of Justice to investigate rising prices of seed and fertilizer since September 2025. Major fertilizer producers such as Nutrien, Mosaic, CF Industries, Koch and Yara have all been included in the investigation that has been focused on market concentration in nitrogen, phosphate and potash.
"The last administration ignored this supply problem," US Department of Agriculture (USDA) secretary Brooke Rollins said Saturday on X while touting measures taken by the Trump administration to alleviate farmer input costs such as lifting trade barriers to importing Venezuelan nitrogen, temporarily waiving Jones Act shipping restrictions and easing diesel exhaust fluid regulations.
USDA deputy secretary Stephen Vaden has gone so far as to allege that the behavior of North American producers is a "duopoly" and that the current state of the domestic fertilizer market lacks true competition as producers administer pricing control.
Rising fertilizer prices have garnered attention from US lawmakers and prompted farmer lobbying groups to call on the Trump administration to lift countervailing duties on Russian and Moroccan phosphate imports that are under review.
