OPINION: Trump waves Lukashenko’s potash at Canada, then backs off beside Zelensky

A Monday, an announcement

Truth Social, September 21

Donald Trump announced on September 21 that the United States was negotiating a huge deal to buy potash from Belarus, at a price “substantially less” than what it pays Canada.

Belarus means Alexander Lukashenko.

And a 30,000-tonne cargo of Belarusian potash is already expected in New Orleans in October. The first in four years, according to the firm Argus, cited by Radio Free Europe.

A post. A ship. A name.

Beneath the prairie

This announcement targets one province in particular. Eleven of the twelve active potash mines in Canada are in Saskatchewan, according to Natural Resources Canada, cited by CBC.

Deep shafts. Machines that chew through ore with a steady roar. Trains heading south.

Potash can be loaded onto trains bound for the corn states, economist Erin Weir sums up for The Canadian Press. Belarus has no rail line to the Midwest.

The miner does not read social media at the bottom of the shaft. He hears the news on the way up.

One more announcement. One more threat.

One line on a screen, and a province rereads its contract.

Substantially less

The text

Let us reread the promise.

The United States is working on a huge deal for Belarusian potash, Trump wrote. The price would be well below what is paid to Canada. “Very good news” for American farmers and ranchers, in his words.

No volume. No timeline. No route.

Only a price, and a country to humiliate.

Canadian potash, for the record, faces no American tariff. It is exempt, The Canadian Press notes. Trump threatens it anyway.

Exempt. Threatened. Bought.

The message

Balázs Jarábik, of the Carnegie Endowment, pointed it out on September 25. The announcement specified neither volumes, nor a timeline, nor a route.

It looks first of all, he writes, like a domestic political message ahead of the midterm elections. A promise of cheaper fertilizer to farmers. And one more lever to press Canada.

An election message. Pressure on Ottawa. Two uses for one sentence.

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe declined to speculate on the motives. He only mentioned, according to CBC, pressure from Midwest farm states ahead of the vote.

Substantially less, without a single tonne specified.

Lukashenko’s cash box

A hard-currency earner

We have to say what would be bought.

Minsk’s potash is the country’s top export. Minsk’s potash brought in more than $1 billion in 2024, according to estimates cited by Radio Free Europe. Minsk’s potash now travels by Russian rail and through Russian ports.

Belaruskali, the state producer, is one of the Lukashenko government’s largest sources of hard currency, the same outlet writes.

Potash fills Lukashenko’s cash box.

Western sanctions date from the brutal crackdown on the 2020 protests, Radio Free Europe recalls. Lukashenko found buyers despite them. Fewer than before. Enough to hold on.

An ally of Moscow

Belarus, a close ally of Russia, has helped Moscow in its attacks on Ukraine since the full-scale invasion, The Canadian Press recalls.

Scott Moe wrote it that same day. More than 40 countries, including Canada and its allies, sanction Belarus for supporting the invasion. Buying that potash means supporting Russian aggression, he says.

He calls it “blood potash.”

I stand with Saskatchewan’s miners and with Ukraine. Against the September 21 announcement. Because it dresses up as a discount the hard currency of a regime that helps Moscow wage its war.

This is not morality. It is bookkeeping.

A discount for the farmer, a rent for the regime.

Tuesday, beside Zelensky

Twenty-four hours

The next day, September 22, Trump changed his tone.

“We’ll continue to go with Canada,” he told reporters, according to The Canadian Press. But Belarus would like to sell it much cheaper, he added. Our farmers need good prices.

A Monday to threaten. A Tuesday to soften.

Where did he say it?

At the United Nations General Assembly. During a bilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The setting

The retreat on potash from Moscow’s ally happened while he sat next to the president of the country under attack.

Nobody said why. The setting said it for them.

A chair. A step back.

Mark Carney answered the same day. Canadian potash is reliable and competitive, he said. He sees an opportunity to grow the fertilizer industry north and south of the border.

And yet Trump took nothing back. He kept Belarus in the sentence. As a benchmark price.

One step back, with Minsk kept as the benchmark.

What Minsk cannot deliver

Everything is already sold

The threat has a physical limit.

Minsk has no hidden reserve, says Erin Weir. Minsk has no free volumes, Lukashenko himself admitted on September 21: everything is already under contract. Minsk has no direct access to the sea, and Lithuania has closed its transit.

Minsk cannot go through the European Union, which keeps its sanctions on Belarusian potash until February 2027, according to Carnegie. Above all, Minsk does not have the right product. Belaruskali mostly makes pink potash. The American market mostly uses white, according to an analyst cited by Radio Free Europe.

That leaves the Russian ports.

So Russia. Always Russia.

Six against fifteen

According to U.S. Geological Survey figures cited by Radio Free Europe, Belarus produced about 6 million tonnes of potash in 2025. Canada, about 15 million.

About 27% of Belarusian potash goes to China. Minsk will not fall out with its main buyer, economist Nikolai Kulbaka believes, as cited by Radio Free Europe.

China first. The rest after.

Between 2021 and 2024, the United States imported nearly 80% of its potash from Canada, according to the same survey, cited by The Canadian Press.

Finding potash has not been hard, StoneX analyst Josh Linville told Reuters, according to CBC. What farmers are short of, he says, is phosphate and nitrogen.

Minsk promises what it has already sold to others.

The Midwest farmer

The good news promised

Trump speaks for farmers. Let us listen to what actually matters to them.

Potash prices jumped after the invasion of Ukraine. They have fallen since. They remain above prewar levels, according to The Canadian Press.

So Moscow’s war has already cost the American farmer. Buying from its ally will not make potash cheaper.

The announcement gave no details. Above all, it created uncertainty, says Asim Biswas, an agriculture professor at the University of Guelph.

The price nobody sets

Pam Schwann, president of the Saskatchewan Mining Association, points out the obvious. Our mines do not set the price. They take it, on a world market.

Minsk’s potash would follow the same rule, she says.

And it would travel farther. Through Russian ports, then across the ocean, then on American trains, according to Weir.

What good is a discount nobody can deliver?

The Midwest farmer is short of nitrogen. He is promised potash.

Fertilizer Canada puts it its own way. An integrated supply chain has kept fertilizer affordable for North American farmers.

In the Midwest, you pay the world price, not a post’s price.

Two hundred and fifty detainees

Washington’s best defence

Now Washington deserves its best argument.

This is not only about potash. It is about political prisoners.

On March 19, Washington lifted its sanctions on Belarusian potash, Radio Free Europe reports. In exchange, Minsk had released a group of political prisoners, according to European Pravda. Two hundred and fifty, Carnegie specifies.

Two hundred and fifty people. As many cells emptied.

September 16

On September 16, U.S. envoy John Coale announced in Minsk the release of 25 more political detainees. In exchange, Washington lifted sanctions on two more Belarusian companies, according to European Pravda.

Carnegie sums up the logic. Washington treats Belarus’s sovereignty as a goal in itself. It does not expect Minsk to switch sides. It is testing whether targeted economic engagement can slow its absorption by Russia, while securing more releases.

People walked out of prison. That is a fact. It is a good thing.

Walking out of prison is never a detail.

Twenty-five instead of two hundred and fifty

A trickle

And yet the count has changed.

In March, 250 releases. In September, 25.

Ten times fewer.

Lukashenko wants more. Western banks still block his payments, his airline cannot fly normally to the West, and Klaipeda stays closed, Carnegie reports.

Carnegie gives the reason. Minsk refuses to deliver the whole humanitarian package until sanctions relief pays more.

A larger group remains in prison, Carnegie writes. Washington offered to unlock $43 million in frozen potash payments at Citibank. Minsk judged the offer insufficient.

In other words, potash is the currency of the exchange. Every release has a price. The price is settled in tonnes sold.

What Canada adds

This diplomacy did not need Canada.

Freeing prisoners did not require announcing a price “substantially less” than Saskatchewan’s. The September 21 announcement turned the currency of a humanitarian exchange into a trade weapon against an ally.

Belarus, for its part, remains integrated into Russia’s military infrastructure, Carnegie recalls. The European Union considers it a co-aggressor against Ukraine.

For Minsk, Jarábik adds, the destination matters less than the route. What Lukashenko wants is to reopen transit through Lithuania.

Belaruskali still owns 30% of a bulk terminal in Klaipeda. It is suing Lithuania in arbitration.

Potash for America is a pretext. The port is the goal.

Paying a ransom in fertilizer does not make it a discount.

Our leverage, our refusal

The threat was small

I have to write what bothers my own side.

Saskatchewan was risking almost nothing on Monday. Moe said so himself on Tuesday, to CBC. The plan was not realistic. Belarus ships all its potash east, he said.

Our alarm was bigger than the threat. It served Trump’s message as much as our defence.

I regret it. We shouted over a thirty-thousand-tonne ship.

The lever we leave alone

And that lever, we refuse to use. Nearly half of Canada’s potash exports go to the United States, worth $4.2 billion, according to Natural Resources Canada, cited by The Canadian Press.

Doug Ford would like to block potash and oil. Moe opposes any halt to exports and any export tax, which he says would crush his province’s economy. The province instead imposed a 50% tax on American alcohol.

The concentration of production, Weir says, still gives Saskatchewan real bargaining power. We let it sleep.

He advises taking Trump with a grain of salt. Or a grain of potash.

That is true, and it does not change this: it was not Regina that offered to buy Lukashenko’s hard currency.

We keep our lever sheathed. Washington draws its own.

Klaipeda, Warsaw, Kyiv

The transit requested

Here is the cost the announcement does not show.

In May, Washington asked Lithuania to let Belarusian fertilizer through, Radio Free Europe revealed. Washington asked Poland the same thing. Washington asked Ukraine the same thing.

Ukraine.

A country at war, asked to open its routes to one of the main sources of hard currency for the man who…

It has to be said to Washington and to Ottawa alike. Kyiv’s railways are not a bargaining chip.

Odesa in the balance

European Pravda had noted it in May. Washington was pressing Kyiv to lift its restrictions on Belarusian fertilizer, a major source of funding for the regime.

Carnegie now raises the idea of transit through Ukraine, as part of a broader arrangement. A maritime ceasefire. The reopening of Odesa. Such a deal would weigh far more than the purchase Trump announced, Jarábik writes. It would also be far harder.

Meanwhile, the 30,000-tonne cargo is making its way to New Orleans. Everything suggests it is going through Russia, since Vilnius keeps its door shut.

Lithuania answers on security grounds. Belarus remains integrated into the Russian military apparatus, Carnegie recalls.

Who pays the price difference?

The discount promised to the Midwest is also bargained over Kyiv’s railways.

New Orleans, in October

Thirty thousand tonnes

Back to the ship.

Thirty thousand tonnes is not much. Canada supplied nearly a third of the world’s potash in 2024, according to CBC.

But it is the first Belarusian cargo to the United States in four years, according to Argus. Everything suggests it did not wait for the deal Trump announced.

Thirty thousand tonnes. A drop. A precedent.

And yet on Tuesday, Trump said he would stick with Canada.

The pink dust

When a bulk carrier unloads, the dust sticks to gloves and eyelashes. Pink or white, it does not say where it comes from.

The invoice does. It says Minsk.

I admit it: on Tuesday, reading about Trump’s retreat, I smiled. Saskatchewan was keeping its customer. Then I reread the date of the cargo.

The smile went away.

Customer kept, ship under way.

The good move, the bad move

What deserves credit

An act is judged by its effects. Trump signed two kinds.

A good move: 250 prisoners freed in March. A good move: 25 more on September 16, and hundreds of others that envoy Coale says he is confident of obtaining, according to Carnegie.

These releases are real. They have names I do not know. They have families who know them.

What deserves a no

A bad move: presenting Minsk’s hard currency as a discount against Canada. A bad move: asking Kyiv to open its route to that currency. A bad move: making the announcement the day before a meeting with Zelensky.

The first move protects lives. The other three weaken Ukraine and divide allies.

Two lists. One president.

A president can hold both lists at once. He must then sign both.

Washington is also seeking Europe’s support. Its envoy met the new Lithuanian prime minister and travelled to Latvia, according to Carnegie.

The line is simple. Prisoners for sanctions, yes. Potash against Saskatchewan, no.

Freeing detainees, yes. Cashing in on someone else’s war, no.

A tonne of potash

The bag on the shoulder

A bag of fertilizer weighs the same on the shoulder, whether it comes from Saskatchewan or Soligorsk.

What changes is where the money goes.

In Saskatchewan, it pays miners, trains, towns. In Minsk, it fills the cash box of a regime that more than 40 countries sanction.

The same grain. Two destinations. A war’s worth of difference.

A ship unloads in a few days. A trade habit takes years to undo.

October

What will we say in October, when the Minsk cargo docks in New Orleans?

On Tuesday, Trump backed off. The ship did not.

It keeps coming.

He backed off beside Zelensky. Lukashenko’s cash box awaits its cargo.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• The Canadian Press — Scott Moe on Belarusian blood potash, September 21, 2026
• The Canadian Press — Trump says the U.S. will stay with Canadian potash, September 22, 2026
• CBC News — Scott Moe calls the Belarus plan unrealistic, September 22, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Radio Free Europe — can Belarus replace Canadian potash, September 22, 2026
• Carnegie Politika — Balázs Jarábik on the potash deal and Minsk, September 25, 2026
• European Pravda — the potash deal, sanctions lifted and detainees freed, September 21, 2026