INVESTIGATION: Moroccan fertilizer, the Iran war and inflation — why Trump had to bend on his own tariffs

A president suspending his own tariffs on key imports

On June 29, 2026, Donald Trump signed a presidential proclamation declaring an economic state of emergency to temporarily suspend — for 8 months — customs duties on imports of phosphate fertilizer from Morocco. Quiet in its form but heavy with economic and geopolitical significance, this decision reveals the practical limits of Trumpian tariff policy when confronted with agricultural and inflationary realities that cannot be solved through unilateral decrees.

The context is brutally clear: the U.S. inflation rate hit 4.2% in May 2026, its highest level in three years, up from just 2.4% in February 2026. The war in Iran — which has driven energy and fertilizer prices sharply higher for months — has created pressure on American farmers that even the White House can no longer ignore. The result: Trump suspended his own tariffs. It is a partial capitulation dressed up as a strategic decision.

Moroccan phosphate: an unrecognized American agricultural dependency

Morocco is one of the world's leading producers and exporters of phosphate, a mineral essential to the manufacture of agricultural fertilizers. The United States, despite its own deposits, depends in part on Moroccan imports to keep fertilizer prices accessible for its farmers. This dependency, largely unknown to the general public, is nonetheless strategically significant: without affordable fertilizers, American agricultural output contracts, food prices rise, and inflation accelerates.

Trump's proclamation implicitly acknowledges this structural dependency. By suspending tariffs on Moroccan phosphate for 8 months, he is buying time before the November 2026 midterm elections — a calendar that is anything but accidental. The decision reveals that even the most aggressive tariff policy must reckon with agricultural and electoral realities.

There is something deliciously revealing about this decision: the man who made tariffs his political identity is forced to suspend his own tariffs on products essential to American agriculture. This is not weakness — it is pragmatism. But it reveals that across-the-board protectionism has limits that even its promoters cannot indefinitely ignore.

How a regional conflict becomes an American agricultural crisis

The war in Iran, triggered by Israeli-American strikes and sustained through ongoing operations since autumn 2025, created major disruptions in global energy supply chains. Iran controlled a significant portion of transit through the Strait of Hormuz before the conflict, and disruptions to this strategic maritime corridor drove oil and natural gas prices to levels high enough to directly impact the production costs of nitrogen fertilizers.

Nitrogen fertilizers — urea, anhydrous ammonia, ammonium nitrate — are manufactured from natural gas. When natural gas prices explode because of the Iran war, fertilizer production costs follow immediately. This transmission of the Iranian geopolitical crisis to the corn fields of Iowa or the wheat fields of Kansas is rapid and direct. American farmers felt it as early as the winter of 2025-2026, and their political representatives immediately escalated the concern to Washington.

Moroccan phosphate as a strategic substitute

Facing pressure on nitrogen fertilizers, American farmers increasingly turned to phosphate fertilizers — manufactured from rock phosphate — as a complement or partial substitute. Demand for imported phosphate therefore increased precisely at the moment when Trumpian tariffs on Moroccan imports were making these products more expensive. The result: double pressure on agricultural costs that professional organizations quickly converted into political pressure on the White House.

Morocco represents a significant share of American imports of DAP (diammonium phosphate) and MAP (monoammonium phosphate), the two main forms of phosphate fertilizer used in American agriculture. Without affordable access to these products, certain agricultural regions face painful choices: reduce fertilizer application rates, reduce cultivated acreage, or absorb additional costs that erode already thin margins.

It is clearer now why this decision was inevitable. The Iran war is not only a humanitarian and geostrategic catastrophe — it is an economic shock that ripples all the way to Midwest farms. Geopolitics and economics are inseparable. Trump knows this. And sometimes, reality forces him to act accordingly, even when it contradicts his own rhetoric.

A number that changes everything politically

A U.S. inflation rate of 4.2% in May 2026 concentrates enormous political pressure on any administration. For Trump, who made fighting inflation a central theme of his second term and who benefited from voter frustration over inflation under the previous administration, this figure is particularly embarrassing. A rate of 4.2%, up from 2.4% in February 2026, represents a rapid and visible acceleration in the daily lives of American households.

Food prices are especially politically sensitive: they are visible, recurring, and difficult for consumers to rationalize away. A rise in the price of bread, meat, or vegetables is an immediate political signal that any government feels in its polling numbers. With the November 2026 midterm elections approaching, the decision to suspend tariffs on Moroccan phosphate is also an electoral decision: slow, even modestly, the rise of agricultural costs to prevent food inflation from becoming the dominant campaign theme.

Trumpian tariffs and their contribution to inflation

Economists and financial institutions have documented the contribution of Trump's tariff policies to American inflation. Analyses published by institutions such as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Peterson Institute for International Economics show that import tariffs pass through to consumer prices, even if this effect is sometimes partial and delayed. In the context of inflation already fueled by the energy crisis tied to the Iran war, agricultural tariffs represent an aggravating factor that the suspension on Moroccan phosphate seeks to neutralize.

This implicit acknowledgment that tariffs contribute to the very inflation the administration claims to be fighting is one of the most striking paradoxes of Trumpian economic policy. The 8-month suspension is an admission that, on this specific point, tariff policy was in direct contradiction with the anti-inflation objective. It is a partial capitulation that official rhetoric seeks to present as a proactive strategic decision.

Here is the fundamental contradiction of Trumpian economics, exposed in all its nakedness: impose tariffs to protect American industry, then suspend them when they drive up the inflation that punishes the very voters the tariffs were supposed to help. It is a vicious cycle that economists predicted and that the facts confirm, once again.

A bilateral relationship with important geopolitical dimensions

The decision to suspend tariffs on Moroccan phosphate is not purely economic — it also has a geopolitical dimension. Morocco is one of the Arab countries closest to the United States in the region and one of the signatories of the Abraham Accords normalizing relations with Israel. In the context of the war in Iran and regional tensions across the Middle East, maintaining positive economic relations with Rabat is a diplomatic priority for Washington.

Morocco controls approximately 70% of the world's known phosphate reserves, making it an indispensable player in the geopolitics of fertilizers. Beijing has for years been strengthening its economic influence in Africa, particularly in mineral-rich countries like Morocco. Persistently penalizing Moroccan phosphate exports through high tariffs risks pushing Rabat to diversify its trade partnerships toward China — a geostrategically counterproductive outcome for Washington.

The geopolitics of critical minerals and the Sino-American competition

Phosphates, like other critical minerals, have become a direct geopolitical battleground between the United States and China. Beijing has systematically sought to secure access to these resources in Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia. An America that treats Morocco as a trade adversary rather than a strategic partner cedes ground to China in a competition that extends far beyond the question of agricultural tariffs.

This geostrategic dimension likely weighed in Trump's final decision. Suspending tariffs on Moroccan phosphate also sends a signal to Rabat: the United States considers you a partner, not a trade target. In the broader competitive game with China, this type of signal carries a value that far exceeds short-term tariff calculations.

China plays chess while others play checkers. It has been investing in mining partnerships in Africa for twenty years, securing critical resources with impressive patience and strategic consistency. America, meanwhile, imposes tariffs then suspends them according to electoral cycles. This is not strategy — it is short-sighted tactics dressed up as doctrine.

Billions of dollars in refunds that businesses are still waiting for

Alongside the decision on Moroccan phosphate, another tariff problem was quietly festering in Washington: billions of dollars in tariff refunds owed to American companies that had imported taxed inputs to manufacture exported goods. These refunds — provided for under American trade rules — had accumulated a considerable backlog, according to data published by sources close to industrial circles.

Senator Elizabeth Warren published data showing that hundreds of American companies were waiting on tariff refunds long overdue, creating a significant cash-flow problem for some exporting SMEs. This reveals that even the administrative mechanics of tariff policy are under strain — customs agencies lack the human resources to quickly process the volume of refund claims generated by the administration's aggressive trade policy.

The impact on American export businesses

For companies that paid tariffs on imported inputs used in their production and are now waiting for refunds to maintain their competitiveness in export markets, the refund delay is a concrete cash-flow problem. Published data suggests that these refunds, if processed normally, would represent a quiet but significant boost to the earnings of many American companies in the coming quarters.

But the delay in refunds also means companies have had to finance this shortfall themselves, often through additional credit, at a time when interest rates remain elevated. For large multinationals, this is an inconvenience. For exporting SMEs, it is a threat to viability. The Trump administration has created a tariff system whose administrative side effects are as damaging as the tariffs themselves.

The ultimate paradox of Trump's tariff policy: in wanting to protect American producers, he has created a system so administratively complex that the refunds legitimately owed to American exporters are not arriving on time. It is protectionism that punishes itself. I have no more precise term to describe the situation.

A welcome but insufficient measure for the agricultural world

American agricultural organizations welcomed the suspension of tariffs on Moroccan phosphate with measured relief. Groups like the American Farm Bureau Federation praised the decision as an acknowledgment of the difficulties farmers face in a context of rising input costs. But this relief is immediately tempered by the limited duration of the measure — only 8 months — and by uncertainty about what comes next.

The suspension potentially expires in March 2027, just after the November 2026 midterm elections. This timing is not incidental: the measure lasts exactly long enough to get past the critical electoral deadline. Farmers planning for the 2027 season have no certainty about the tariff conditions under which they will be operating. This persistent uncertainty is precisely what the agricultural world had been asking Washington to eliminate — without success.

American agriculture in an environment of rising costs

Beyond tariffs, American farmers face a combination of economic pressures: rising fertilizer costs (tied to the Iran war), rising interest rates on farm loans, uncertainty over export markets linked to trade disputes, and the effects of climate change on yields. The tariff suspension on Moroccan phosphate resolves only a small part of this complex of challenges.

USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) data indicates that American net farm income has been under growing pressure since early 2026. The combination of rising input cost inflation and the relative stagnation of production prices creates a cost-price squeeze that weighs particularly on mid-sized operations — neither large enough to absorb shocks through economies of scale, nor small enough to access high-value niche markets.

I am not a farmer and I do not pretend to know their reality from the inside. But when families who produce a nation's food find themselves in such precarious financial situations, it is a sign that something is not working in the broader economic system. This is not a tariff problem — it is a systemic problem that tariffs can neither create nor solve on their own.

The deeper meaning of the June 29 proclamation

The June 29, 2026 decision on Moroccan phosphate is symptomatic of a broader problem: a tariff policy designed to serve short-term political objectives, confronted with the structural economic realities it cannot simply ignore. Trump built his commercial brand on the promise that tariffs would create American jobs and reduce imports. But American farmers cannot grow phosphate to replace Moroccan imports in the 8 months the suspension lasts — nature does not follow electoral calendars.

What this investigation reveals is the deep mechanics of tariff decisions in economic reality: tariffs have distributed effects throughout the economy that create winners and losers. When the losers are sufficiently visible and politically important — Midwest farmers in the run-up to the midterms — the administration is forced to adjust. This is normal economic policymaking, even when dressed in nationalist rhetoric. And sometimes, normalcy ultimately reasserts itself.

The lesson for the West and its allies

For the West's trading partners and allies, the Moroccan phosphate decision sends a double message. On one hand, Trumpian tariff policy is not monolithic and immovable: it can bend when economic and electoral pressure demands it. On the other, this flexibility remains fundamentally tactical rather than strategic — the suspension is temporary, with no guarantee of what follows. For businesses and governments seeking to plan their trade relations with the United States over the long term, this structural unpredictability remains the principal challenge.

For the West more broadly, the lesson is that commercial cohesion between allies is a strategic asset that erratic tariff policies progressively erode. In a context of global competition with China and of necessary support for Ukraine, a commercially unpredictable America is a burden as much as an asset. Finding the balance between legitimate national interests and allied reliability remains the unresolved challenge of contemporary American trade policy.

I conclude this investigation with the conviction that tariff policies are not inherently good or bad — they are tools that can serve legitimate objectives when used with consistency and long-term vision. What is problematic about the Trumpian approach is the perpetual improvisation, the policy reversals driven by polls and electoral emergencies. This is not trade strategy — it is tactics disguised as doctrine.

Phosphate, lithium, rare earths: the silent competition

The Moroccan phosphate tariff suspension fits within a broader context: the global competition for critical minerals. Phosphate, like lithium, rare earths, and cobalt, has become a direct geostrategic battleground between major powers. China dominates the processing of many of these minerals, even when extraction occurs elsewhere. Morocco, with its considerable phosphate reserves, is a player that neither Washington nor Beijing can afford to neglect.

Initiatives like the Minerals Security Partnership — an agreement between the United States and its allies to secure strategic mineral supply chains — implicitly recognize that minerals diplomacy is as important as military diplomacy. Imposing punitive tariffs on Moroccan phosphate exports directly undermines this strategy. The June 29 suspension is therefore also a correction of a strategic consistency error.

What this means for global food security

Global food security depends directly on the availability and price of fertilizers. Disruptions to phosphate or nitrogen fertilizer supply chains translate into food price increases that hit the most vulnerable populations in middle- and low-income countries first. The link between American tariff policy on Moroccan phosphate and hunger in developing nations is not abstract — it is real and documentable.

International organizations like the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) have repeatedly sounded alarms about the risks that disruptions to fertilizer markets pose to global food security. An American tariff policy that exacerbates these disruptions therefore has a real humanitarian impact, even if that impact is difficult to see from the corridors of the White House or the television studios of Washington.

Global food security is not an abstract topic reserved for UN conferences. It is a reality affecting billions of people that depends, among other things, on decisions like the one of June 29, 2026 on Moroccan phosphate tariffs. When fertilizer prices are manipulated for electoral reasons, we are playing with the food supply of populations that have no voice in American elections. That is a useful reminder that American decisions carry global consequences.

The causal chain from Moroccan phosphate to American policy

The presidential proclamation of June 29, 2026 on Moroccan phosphate tariffs illustrates a causal chain rarely analyzed in its full complexity: a war in Iran disrupts energy markets, which drives up fertilizer costs, which weigh on American farmers, who pressure their political representatives, who transmit that pressure to the White House, which ends up suspending tariffs it had itself imposed. Every link in this chain is documented and verifiable. This is geopolitics meeting the economics of everyday life.

This interconnection is also a reminder that seemingly local policy decisions — a war in the Middle East, a tariff on an African mineral — ripple through supermarkets and farms thousands of miles away. The West cannot afford to ignore these causal chains or manage them through electoral half-measures. What is needed is a coherent strategy on critical minerals, supply chains, and trade alliances that anticipates these crises rather than being overtaken by them.

The proclamation of June 29, 2026 will not resolve the structural problems of American agriculture, nor will it single-handedly reduce inflation. But it reveals that even the most rigid policies must ultimately reckon with reality. For a columnist who believes in reality as the ultimate safeguard against excessive ideologies, that is almost reassuring.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. I claim analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

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The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a critical, contextual synthesis based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

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