Agricultural Chemical Manufacturers NAICS 3253

Mar 18, 2025 - TFI Seeks Exemption for Canadian Fertilizers

• The Fertilizer Institute (TFI) is urging the Trump administration to provide a strategic carveout for Canadian fertilizers – including designating potash and phosphate as critical minerals – to exempt them from import tariffs. Trump imposed 25% duties on most Canadian products on March 4th before announcing a one-month reprieve on some goods, including fertilizers, two days later. The US imported nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium fertilizer products valued at more than $10 billion, more than half of which came from Canada, in 2023. Canada supplies 85% of the potash fertilizer and nearly 10% of their nitrogen fertilizer used by US growers, according to TFI. Potash prices have already risen nearly 20% this year ahead of US tariffs and phosphate prices are poised to surge more on retaliatory Canadian tariffs, Reuters reports. Higher prices for fertilizer – most farmers’ biggest input cost – would likely be passed along to growers.
• Facing tighter budgets, US farmers are trading down to generic chemicals to treat their crops, in a blow to the big agricultural chemical manufacturers, Reuters reports. Falling crop prices and rising input costs are causing US farmers to cut back on their spring planting budgets, sending shocks throughout the US agriculture sector, including companies that make pesticides and fungicides. “It’s like if you grew up eating Fruity Pebbles and now you go to Dollar General and get Fruity Bites,” Illinois grain grower Jeff O’Connor told Reuters. The pullback in spending is impacting ag chemicals companies including Bayer, Syngenta, Corteva, which are also facing increasing generic competition. The expiration of over two dozen active ingredient patents in recent years is driving a boom in off-patent use, with which now accounts for about 80% of the agrichemical market share, Rabobank agricultural analysts told Reuters.

• In October, the EPA announced the cancellation of all products containing the pesticide dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate (DCPA or Dacthal) under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act. In August, the agency had issued an emergency order suspending all registrations of the pesticide due to serious health risks – the first time in almost 40 years EPA took this type of emergency action. The pesticide is registered to control weeds in both agricultural and nonagricultural settings, but DCPA is primarily used on crops such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and onions. The final cancellation prohibits anyone from distributing, selling or carrying out other similar activities for the remaining pesticide products containing DCPA as well as prohibiting using existing stocks of those products. In August, American Vanguard Corp., the only manufacturer of Dacthal, said it was working to remove it from distribution.
• Producer prices for agricultural chemical manufacturers were relatively unchanged in December compared to a year ago after sinking 19.3% in the previous December-versus-December annual comparison, according to the latest US Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Following a steep runup that began in the fourth quarter of 2020 and peaked in April 2022 after which prices dropped precipitously, prices have exhibited a flatter trend. Meanwhile, industry employment grew 2.4% year over year in December and average industry wages at chemical manufacturers rose by 3.1% YoY in January to a new high of $31.72 per hour, BLS data show.