The Policy Catalyst
Potash is not a commodity you can reroute overnight. The world has three dominant supply centers — Canada, Russia, and Belarus — and the United States imports heavily from all of them. When Washington suspended normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus in April 2022 and then, in March 2023, published Federal Register rules raising duties on Russian goods to 35–70 percent ad valorem while OFAC designated the Belarusian Potash Company and sanctioned the potash sector of the Belarusian economy, the U.S. market lost access to two of the three lowest-cost export blocs simultaneously. Sanctions don't disappear from supply chains quietly — they create structural gaps that legacy producers fill without having to build a single new mine.