Tod Maffin explains why the U.S. imports over 96% of its potash from Canada, a potassium salt essential for fertilizer. The current 25% tariff adds more than $100 per tonne to costs, raising prices for farmers and consumers. Proposed increases could destabilize America's food supply.
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Imagine if the world had a finite amount of oxygen. That every year oxygen is chiseled out of a mine somewhere and put on barges and trains and freight trucks and is shipped to different countries for its citizens to breathe. Now imagine if only two countries controlled that oxygen. That that precious resource is only found in the mines of two nations. If you were the leader of a country that depended on that oxygen, how would you treat those two countries? Potash is not oxygen for humans, it's oxygen for food. It's a special kind of salt, it's really rich in potassium, and it's a really important part of fertilizer. Without potash, crops weaken, they succumb to disease, yields plummet. Potash is what keeps food growing, crops like this one in my hometown of Nanaimo. And two countries control almost the entire global supply. America is not one of those countries, incidentally. It produces produces almost no potash domestically, it imports more than 96% of what it needs, the vast majority of that from one of those two countries: Canada. That makes the US dangerously dependent on a foreign supplier for one of its most essential agricultural inputs. And still, every few years, someone in Washington decides to fix that with tariffs. Back in 1969, the US slapped high duties on Canadian potash, saying prices were unfair. The result? Higher prices for American farmers, higher prices in food, and the U.S. backed off. And now the U.S. has put a 25% tariff on everything from Canada, including potash. That'll raise prices by more than $100 a tonne. Higher costs to grow the crops, higher prices at the grocery store— none of this is brain surgery. And now Trump is threatening to double the tariff. There's a scene in Star Wars, Episode IV, where Tarkin threatens to destroy Leia's home planet, Alderaan, to demonstrate the power of the Death Star. And she says to him, "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." Oppressive tactics backfire. Force breeds resistance, not submission. History proves that. Donald Trump probably hasn't seen Star Wars, so let's put it in simpler terms. Starving your own people is bad economics. So Americans, next time you bite into your bread, thank potash. Thank Canada. Because without Canadian potash, America's food supply would be at the mercy of the only other country in the world which produces it. The real-world Death Star. Russia.
