Trump Is Spoiling for a Fight over Canadian Potash | The Walrus

IN DECEMBER 2025, United States president Donald Trump struck a deal that—uncharacteristically for such a spectacle-driven politician—barely registered among the general public.

The agreement committed the Belarusian government to releasing 123 political prisoners, a significant concession from one of Europe’s most entrenched authoritarian regimes. In return, Washington agreed to lift sanctions on Belarus’s potash exports—sanctions it escalated after the country’s rigged 2020 election and later expanded, in 2022, when Belarus allowed Russia to use its territory to invade Ukraine.

Why potash? Blame Canada. The United States can live without many imports. It can’t farm at scale without our potash. In 2024, the US imported about 12 million tonnes of the fertilizer from Canada, all of it dug from Saskatchewan, where it enters the US tariff-free under the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). Cut that supply, and American agriculture could grind to a halt.

As CUSMA heads into renegotiation this summer, the mood in Washington appears confrontational. Reopening Belarusian exports would give the US access to one of the few alternative global reserves—and, with it, leverage in an area where it currently has little.