Trump issues order declaring glyphosate national defense priority [View all]

Source: USA Today

Feb. 19, 2026, 9:12 p.m. ET


President Donald Trump issued an executive order this week prioritizing U.S. production of glyphosate, saying the herbicide is critical to the nation’s security. Trump’s executive order, issued late Wednesday, Feb. 18, provides limited immunity to domestic companies that make glyphosate and phosphorus, declaring both essential to the nation’s military and farmers.

Using the 1950 Defense Production Act, Trump said elemental phosphorus is critical to military technologies such as radar, solar cells and sensors, and to agriculture as a "precursor element" in producing glyphosate-based herbicides. The president also used the Defense Production Act during his first term, ordering U.S. meatpacking plants to remain open during the global pandemic as thousands of workers became ill from COVID-19 and nearly 300 died.

According to Trump's order, glyphosate allows U.S. “farmers to efficiently and cost-effectively produce food and livestock feed.” The order further states that the U.S. has “only a single domestic producer of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides, and this producer does not meet our annual needs for those inputs,” requiring roughly 6 million kilograms of elemental phosphorus to be imported annually.

Trump ordered U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brook Rollins, in consultation with the U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, to ensure no orders, rules or regulations place "the corporate viability of any domestic producer of elemental phosphorus or glyphosate-based herbicides at risk."

Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/02/19/trump-executive-order-glyphosate-herbicides-roundup/88766972007/

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Phosphorous is used for a TON of things other than to manufacture that herbicide (like for fertilizers). But excess phosphorous fertilizer runoff into estuaries, ponds, lakes, rivers, and bays, have caused horrible algae blooms too.