Trump's proposed tariffs on Canadian potash would crush U.S. farmers, not Canada. The U.S. imports 80-90% of its potash from Canada because it has no domestic deposits, and a 30-40% tariff would squeeze the razor-thin margins of 1.6 million family farms that make up 95% of American agriculture. Canada can simply sell its potash elsewhere.
Chapters
This week Donald Trump threatened very severe tariffs on Canadian potash. It's a kind of fertilizer. Well, I have been deputized by the entire country to provide a response, and that response is: Fuckin' do it, bud! Do it! Do it! We're ready! We can't wait! And here's why. Food crops do not care about nationalism. They care about potassium. Potash is potassium salt. It is critically important for growing things. Without potash, crops are weak. They're prone to infestation, and they won't be able to sustain the food production needs of an entire country. Taking potash away from American farmers would put farm operations across that country into bankruptcy and reduce the food supply to dangerous levels. The kind of levels, ironically, that if it were any other country we were talking about, we would probably be supplying aid to. Why? Because the US doesn't really have much of its own. Two countries won the geological lottery for that: Russia and Canada. And we supply between 80 to 90% 80% of what the US brings in each year. Of course, Trump doesn't understand potash, and we can't expect him to. It's a two-syllable word. But somehow he believes that gouging his own farmers for the material they need to feed the country will mean that American manufacturers will step in and make it domestically? But— and I can't believe that I have to explain this to the self-professed leader of the free world— but, sir, Potash is not a car. You either have it under your feet in the soil or you don't. You cannot engineer geology. And Canada, Saskatchewan actually, is sitting on the largest and purest deposit in the world. The Prairie Evaporate. Incidentally, this is why Canadians cannot write off the US's threats of annexation as bluster. We own geological treasure. Aluminum. Cobalt, nickel, uranium. And they want it. We know from history America's policy on things it wants is step 1: take it. By force if necessary. That's it. There's never a step 2. So, since his planning team isn't particularly great with that whole long-term consequences thing, let's map this out for him. Trump adds, say, a 30% surcharge on American farmers who need to buy Canadian potash. Remember, that's how tariffs work. The farmers pay that, not Canada. 95% of American farms are small and family-owned. Those farmers already operate on razor-thin margins. This would put many of them, maybe most of them, into bankruptcy. There are more than 1.6 million of those family farms in the US. If even 10% of them falter, that is enough to crash the insurance system in that market. Just ask anyone from Florida's coastline how easy it is to get home insurance these days. The larger operations, of course, would try to keep up, but even they live and die by input costs. A 40% spike on something as basic as potassium is not a haircut, it's a guillotine. They would slash planting, delay upgrades, and cut whatever staff they have left after Trump's immigration goons have taken them. And then it reaches the citizens. Lower yields means less food, higher prices at the grocery store, and even more of its people going hungry. America would be punishing its own food system and starving its own people to make a point about a mineral it doesn't even have. As for Canada, we'd be fine. Even though we supply the US with almost all its potash, we still have millions of tonnes more. Just last month, the Saskatchewan Potash Company announced it was building an export terminal in Washington State, no less, not to supply the US with more, but to ship to Brazil, China, India, and the dozens of other countries who never stop asking us to sell them more. So if Donald Trump wants to kneecap his own farmers to teach Canada a lesson, he should go for it. The only people who learn anything from that will be the parents staring at empty fridges and farmers holding bills they can't pay. Both wishing someone in Washington had bothered to look up where potash actually comes from.
