US Fertilizer Should Be for Americans First

American families’ concerns about high grocery store bills continue to deepen, and elevated fertilizer prices are a big reason why. Fertilizer accounts for 33-45 percent of corn and wheat farmers’ operating costs.  When input prices rise, food prices follow close behind.

While several geopolitical factors are contributing to today's fertilizer crunch, one is entirely self-inflicted: Washington continues to allow the sale of critical American fertilizer inputs to foreign adversaries, even as they systematically manipulate global markets to keep their own consumers well-supplied and drive prices higher for everyone else.

According to the US Geological Survey, the U.S. produces roughly two-thirds of the domestic need for sulfur and sulfuric acid, an oil-refining byproduct and key component in the fertilizer supply chain.

However, the U.S. also exports about 1.8 million metric tons of elemental sulfur a year, accounting for roughly a quarter of domestic output. One of the top recipients of those exports? Chinese state-owned enterprise, the Yuntianhua Group, which is heavily subsidized by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Beijing and its cronies are outmaneuvering Washington. On the one hand, they are facilitating the import of U.S.-made fertilizers and, on the other, preventing their own domestic fertilizer producers from exporting, which increases domestic supply and stabilizes prices for Chinese consumers. What’s more? India, Russia, and Turkey are mirroring China’s export bans to keep domestically produced sulfur within their home markets, driving up global prices in the process. The CCP is using its state-owned enterprises with subsidiaries in other countries, such as Indonesia, to amplify this behavior.

 This is not the first time China has used this playbook. U.S. investigators concluded that Beijing was illegally subsidizing its solar manufacturers and dumping panels into the American market below the cost of production. Today, Chinese firms control over 80 percent of global solar module manufacturing, more than double China's own share of global demand. And when the U.S. moved to level the playing field, Beijing didn't stop — it simply routed production through Southeast Asia. In 2025, the Commerce Department issued its first-ever affirmative findings of transnational subsidization, concluding that Chinese state-backed firms were channeling subsidies through operations in Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia to keep undercutting American manufacturers. That is precisely their strategy with fertilizer: Chinese state-owned enterprises using subsidiaries in countries like Indonesia to amplify the same market manipulation, while Beijing simultaneously locks down its own domestic supply. Different commodities, identical strategy. Undercut American producers, hollow out domestic capacity, then flip the switch once we're dependent.

So what’s to be done? Currently, American oil and gas companies are subject to market forces and their fiduciary duties. Domestic oil and gas refiners can get higher prices abroad for the sulfur that is sourced in the United States. Because foreign countries like China are bidding higher, these companies raise prices for domestic companies and prioritize the highest-profit orders.

But there would be no domestic fertilizer price pressure if adequate volumes of key raw materials, like sulfur, stayed in the US and North America. For the sake of farmers and families, American companies should not be sending raw materials like sulfur to countries like China that are unwilling to freely trade finished fertilizer products. This is a matter of fairness that extends beyond the current fertilizer crisis. Even under more normal market conditions, these countries have been taking advantage of our markets.

All this is happening at the expense of American farmers and families, as well as our allies and partners around the world. It’s a familiar playbook, in which the CCP controls a state-directed communist system to insulate its market by manipulating global trade. The rest of us are footing the bill. This much is clear: especially in times of crisis, American companies should have the ability to sell our sulfur and fertilizer domestically without China and others manipulating the marketplace.

Policymakers in DC should take two concrete steps to address these nonmarket practices. First, in the short term, we should not allow Chinese state-owned companies to manipulate food security and prices in the U.S. These entities should be subject to export controls, and thus prohibited from importing further American-produced sulfur and fertilizers. Second, over the longer term, these export controls should provide negotiating leverage for a fairer market-based system going forward. U.S. companies should no longer have to face market manipulation from foreign entities, and American fertilizer should be for Americans first. U.S. farmers and consumers should never again be held hostage by Beijing exploiting crises for their own gain.

The Honorable Mike Conaway is a former House Agriculture Committee chairman. He was a member of Congress from Texas from 2005 to 2021.

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