Supply Chain, Not Safety Clearance

The Trump administration just handed Bayer, the company behind the glyphosate-laden weedkiller Roundup, a multi-million-dollar weapons contract. No doubt that headline will make most MAHA mom’s spit out their coffee. Indeed, for those that have spent the last two years begging and pleading with the current administration to get glyphosate out of our food supply, the headline reads like a betrayal in broad daylight. The weedkiller conglomerate Bayer is now an arms dealer, and Washington is paying them to be one. But, before we storm the barricades, let’s take a closer look at what is actually going on, because the real story is stranger, maybe more sensible, and far less of a sellout than the headline suggests.

Bayer’s contract with the government is not for glyphosate. It is for white phosphorous, a chemical used by the military in artillery shells, smokescreens, and signaling rounds. Bayer CropScience was named by the Pentagon as the sole source for this mineral, supplying the Army’s Pine Bluff Arsenal. The part that upsets anyone who knows how toxic and dangerous glyphosate is, and how horrible it is that our food supply depends on it, is the fact that white phosphorus and the phosphorus used to make glyphosate both come from the exact same place. A mine operated by Bayer in Soda Springs, Idaho. This mine happens to be the only elemental phosphorus operation in the entire Western Hemisphere. Chemically, elemental phosphorus is molten white phosphorus. Thus, the same ore that becomes weedkiller also becomes munitions. While different products, both come from the same company and the same mine.

White phosphorus is not an American creation. It has been used by multiple nations for decades and is a standard battlefield chemical used in defense programs all over the world, including those of our adversaries, for smokescreens, illumination, and marking targets. Russia fields it freely in Ukraine. Yet, as noted by our government, the United States makes only a fraction of the phosphorus it needs and imports the rest. This amounts to millions of kilograms imported a year, much of it from China, which dominates global production. Most would agree that having to depend on a rival to supply the raw material for our artillery is a marked weakness, not a strength.

The fact that America’s military depends on China for phosphorus is the backstory behind a decision back in February that upset many people. As we reported at the time, President Trump signed an executive order declaring glyphosate and elemental phosphorus “critical to national defense.” Many read the headline as the president throwing his support behind Roundup. Yet, a quick read of the entire order and fact sheet reveals the order made no claim that glyphosate is safe, and offered no pat on the back for spraying it on crops. What is clear in the order is a supply chain argument explaining that America has exactly one domestic producer of these chemicals, and it imports the rest, and if that single source went down or fell into foreign hands, our military and our current food system would be at risk. The White House plainly stated that the order “was not an endorsement of any product or practice.” Even HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who supported the order, said in the same breath that pesticides are “toxic by design, engineered to kill living organisms.” We agree with that assessment, no doubt.

But let’s not be naive about the executive order, either. Glyphosate was not included by accident, and the timing is impossible to ignore. The order was signed about a week before Bayer’s big Supreme Court brief was due in its fight to shield itself from the tens of thousands of cancer lawsuits it is facing related to Roundup. The order even directed that no rule put “the corporate viability” of the glyphosate producer at risk, which could easily be seen as a fancy way of saying “protect Bayer,” which had been lobbying for exactly this kind of cover (even hinting it might stop plant operations without protection). And, as expected, Bayer immediately waved the executive order in court. So no, let’s not be naive. We were informed of a genuine defense need that coincided with a very convenient corporate rescue. Both arriving in the same document, at the same moment.

A serious nation does not want to depend on China for a chemical needed by its artillery. That is basic national defense that conservatives have argued for all along, and it would be true even if Bayer wasn’t involved. Is it possible to have a strong America that makes its own strategic materials—in this case elemental phosphorous—even when the company holding the monopoly is one that we have every reason in the world to distrust? After all, we know Bayer’s history is not squeaky clean. The company made poisonous gas in World War I and ran its own “School for Chemical Warfare.” In 1925, it became part of IG Farben, the industrial engine of the Nazi war machine, which produced the Reich’s explosives, used slave labor, and whose subsidiary made the gas used in the death camps. After the war, IG Farben was broken up and Bayer rose again from the pieces. A century later, through its purchase of Monsanto, Bayer quietly inherited the job of supplying white phosphorus to the United States military. For this company, a defense contract is not a detour. It is a return to form.

But there is a separate question that MAHA should keep in its view. Securing the supply of glyphosate, and even defending Bayer in court, is not the same as declaring the chemical safe for our food supply. The EPA’s health review of glyphosate is still moving along, due in 2027, and nothing about a phosphorus contract settles that review.