New bill in the U.S. Senate aims to lower price of phosphate fertilizers

The Lowering Input Costs for American Farmers Act was introduced in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, April 28, 2026.  Sponsored by Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), and co-sponsored by Senator Grassley (R-Iowa), Hyde-Smith (R-Mississippi), and Ernst (R-Iowa), the bill would eliminate tariffs on phosphate fertilizer and related products coming from Morocco.  We have previously discussed the rising costs of fertilizer and other inputs both on Farm Office Live (upcoming schedule and previous videos available here) and in this blog post which examined the conflict in Iran and its contribution to rising prices.

What steps would the bill take to lower costs?

As mentioned above, the bill would eliminate tariffs on phosphate fertilizer and related products imported from the Kingdom of Morocco. Eliminating these tariffs would be significant, since Morocco is the leading exporter of phosphate fertilizers, holding about 70% of the world’s phosphate rock reserves. Since the Trump Administration took office in 2025, baseline tariffs on Moroccan goods have reached up to 10%.  If the bill is enacted, the elimination of any tariffs on phosphate fertilizer and related products would take place within 7 days of enactment.

 Secondly, if passed, the bill would revoke countervailing duty orders on imports from Morocco within 4 business days. These countervailing duties were first imposed in March of 2021, after Mosaic, a U.S. fertilizer producer, filed a complaint against the OCP Group, a phosphate exporter owned by the Moroccan government. According to congress.gov, a countervailing duty (CVD) is an additional tax or tariff placed on imported goods to offset certain kinds of subsidies provided by an exporting country. (If you’d like to learn more about CVDs, congress.gov has a longer explanation available here). Here, the U.S. (the importer) placed an additional tax on phosphate fertilizer and other related products coming from Morocco (the exporter), because the U.S. felt that the Moroccan government was unfairly subsidizing its phosphate industry. Research conducted by the Agricultural and Food Policy Center at Texas A&M University asserts that CVDs on phosphorus fertilizers have cost U.S. producers $6.9 billion from 2021 to 2025.  Thus, revoking the CVDs on phosphate products from Morocco would likely mean a substantial price cut for producers buying phosphate fertilizer.

Both the tariffs and the countervailing duties on phosphate from Morocco have contributed to higher prices for U.S. producers.  By eliminating these tariffs, the bill would lower the price of phosphate fertilizers for American farmers.  The text of the Lowering Input Costs for American Farmers Act is available here.  For additional reading, a press release from Senator Marshall’s office about the bill is available here.  We will be sure to keep you updated as the bill progresses through Congress.