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Why would it be, in 2025, that the United States is still buying fertilizer from Russia? Russia's war on Ukraine prompted countries to hit Moscow with economic sanctions and trade restrictions, but many of those same countries are still importing Russian products. NPR's HJ Mai reports.
HJ MAI, BYLINE: When Iowa farmer Josh Manske sprays fertilizer on his fields of soybeans and corn, he knows that the product he uses might be imported from Russia.
JOSH MANSKE: I know there's stuff that source from over in Russia.
MAI: Manske, who manages almost 2,000 acres of farmland in Iowa and Minnesota, says it's not something he takes lightly.
MANSKE: I certainly don't want to pad Vladimir Putin's pockets in any way, shape or form. And with what he's done to the people of Ukraine, that's not something that sits well with me.
MAI: But his options are limited, especially at a time when farmers in the U.S. are facing increased financial pressures brought on by the Trump administration's trade war and inflation. Josh Linville says if the federal government were to impose sanctions on Russian fertilizers, it would be a blow to American farmers and consumers.
JOSH LINVILLE: I daresay it would be devastating.
MAI: Linville is the vice president of fertilizer at the financial services company StoneX. He says Russia dominates the industry in nitrogen-based fertilizers like UAN, commonly used for crops like corn, wheat or rice.
LINVILLE: The U.S. imports a little bit over 2 million ton a year. A million ton of that comes from Russia.
MAI: And there's no real alternative, he says. Russia benefits from an abundance of cheap natural gas, which is a key ingredient in fertilizer production. Fertilizers are, of course, not the only product the U.S. imports from Russia. Other prominent examples are critical metals such as uranium and palladium. Palladium is relied on by the auto industry. It's a similar picture over in Europe, where EU countries still imported around $41 billion in Russian goods in 2024. Isaac Levi is a Europe-Russia policy expert at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
ISAAC LEVI: In the third year of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EU sent more money for the imports of fossil fuels to Russia than aid provided to Ukraine.
MAI: He criticizes European leaders for not doing more to cut ties with Russia on fossil fuels.
LEVI: There is a lack of political will and a lack of desire to fully ban the imports to Russian fossil fuels.
MAI: The EU has passed 18 sanctions packages since 2022. But because of Europe's dependency on Russian gas, a ban on gas imports has been elusive. EU countries spent more than $8 billion on imports of Russian liquefied natural gas, or LNG, during the third year of the full-scale invasion.
LEVI: Spain is probably a country that feels quite far away from the war in Ukraine and doesn't feel so threatened by a potential Russian invasion. And therefore, they, for example, have increased imports of Russian LNG.
MAI: While the EU has seen a 9% year over year increase in the volume of LNG imports, it has so far avoided President Trump's wrath, unlike India, which faces an extra 25% tariff specifically for importing Russian oil.
LEVI: This, to some extent, is being used as leverage to try and push through a more successful or favorable trade deal between the United States of America and India.
MAI: This dichotomy of countries sending billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine while also helping bankroll Russia's wartime economy shows the limitations of economic sanctions, says economist Elina Ribakova.
ELINA RIBAKOVA: We've sort of misplaced our hopes on sanctions a bit that they're going to resolve everything. Long story short, when you're trying to sanction a globally highly integrated economy, which is also a dominant player in some markets, then it makes it very difficult.
MAI: Ribakova, who is with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, says in the case of Russia, this means the countries doing the sanctioning must be willing to bear some of the cost. Iowa farmer Josh Manske says he would love to see Russia get out of Ukraine.
MANSKE: But in the same breath, we can't handle any more price increases. I mean, we just can't handle them.
MAI: HJ Mai, NPR News, Washington.
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