Trump says U.S. is working on ‘major deal’ to replace Canadian potash with Belarusian supplies, but President Alexander Lukashenko says Minsk has none to spare

President Donald Trump said on Truth Social that the U.S. is working on “a massive Deal” to buy potash fertilizer from Belarus.

Trump, who is currently waging another trade war with Canada, said, “The pricing would be for substantially less than we are currently paying to Canada, very good news for our Farmers and Ranchers.”

Just hours before Trump’s post, however, Alexander Lukashenko said that even if Belarus regained full access to Western markets for its potash fertilizer, it still could not supply them because all its potash was already under contract:

“As far as I know… We’ve managed to shift our exports eastward. Our negotiations with the Americans are proof of that. A lot of people here are making a fuss about potash. Even if we wanted to supply other markets — Western markets — we simply don’t have the volume. It’s all under contract.”

The U.S. relies on imports for nearly all its potash fertilizer. Canada supplies almost 80% of those imports and Russia another 12%.

Belarus is one of the world’s largest potash fertilizer producers, alongside Canada, Russia, and China. But sanctions have restricted its access to Western markets. The sanctions were imposed over the brutal crackdown on Belarus’s 2020 protests and the Lukashenko regime’s complicity in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

After Trump was reelected to a second term, the U.S. began improving relations with Lukashenko and, among other steps, lifted sanctions on Belarus’s potash industry. The EU, however, has kept its sanctions on Belarusian potash imports in place.