Category: Policy & Regulation

Rapidly increasing lithium production is projected to require several million t/a of sulphuric acid in the next few years, with China, the USA and Australia the main consumers.

Russia is considering limiting potash exports from the second quarter of 2025.

The European Commission is proposing to place tariffs on EU fertilizer imports from Russia and Belarus.

Nitrogen+Syngas went to press just a few days before Donald Trump’s swearing-in as the next president of the United States. While it is sometimes difficult to sort the truth from the hyperbole in his public pronouncements, nevertheless, if taken at face value, they would seem to indicate that we may be in for a turbulent four years in commodity markets in particular. While he is an avowed military non-interventionist, on the economic policy side he has emerged as a firm believer in the power of tariffs to alter markets in the favour of the US, and has promised 20% tariffs on all goods entering the US, potentially rising to 25% for Canada and Mexico, and 60% for his particular bugbear, China, sparking a scramble for wholesalers to stock up in the last few weeks of the Biden presidency. Trump previously raised tariffs on Chinese goods entering the US to 20% during his first term, and the Biden administration made no attempt to reverse this, and even added some additional ones, for example 20% on Russian and Moroccan phosphate imports.

The start of a new year is a traditional time to take stock of the previous 12 months and look ahead to the next. In this regard, CRU’s most recent annual client survey, conducted at the end of December last year, makes interesting reading as to your own concerns for 2025 and beyond. There were numerous responses across commodity and financial sectors, and broadly based worldwide, if slightly skewed towards Europe and North America, but across all of these the key worry for the coming year clearly emerged as trade tariffs and protectionism. This is perhaps unsurprising, given incoming US president Donald Trump’s avowed intent to impose blanket 20% tariffs on all goods entering the US, and up to 60% on China. While most clients did not think tariffs would rise as much as some of Trump’s rhetoric might suggest, most expect rises of 5-10% across the board, and Asian businesses are most concerned. CRU’s most recent position paper on US tariffs highlights some of the internal political and legal challenges in implementing these, but does acknowledge that some rises will be inevitable, and may well produce the kind of reciprocal measures last seen in the previous Trump administration’s trade war with China and the EU in 2018.

We look ahead at fertilizer industry prospects for the next 12 months, including the key economic and agricultural drivers likely to shape the market during 2025.

With a large number of green ammonia projects under development, financing remains the greatest hurdle to getting ventures off the ground.

Venkat Pattabathula, a member of the AIChE Ammonia Safety Committee, reports on the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ (AIChE) Safety in Ammonia Plants and Related Facilities Symposium held in San Diego on 8-12 September 2024.

Emerging evidence suggests that by-products used as fertilizers, particularly ammonium sulphate, may emerge as winners from the EU’s implementation of the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM). In this article, Franck Boher of Upgraid investigates whether by-products can help reshape sustainable fertilizer production in Europe.

Intermittent supply from China due to export restrictions and US duty changes have kept markets guessing over the past couple of years, and there is no sign of that changing.