Lukashenko disputes Trump’s Belarus potash deal, citing fully contracted supplies

Filed 40m ago · Via NV · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: European Parliament · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko says his country has no spare potash to sell the United States, despite President Trump's announcement of a forthcoming major deal to import the fertilizer ingredient from Minsk. Lukashenko says existing supplies are fully contracted, even to other Western markets he'd otherwise want to reach.

Canada currently supplies 53 percent of U.S. potash and meets 80 percent of American farmers' needs, exempt from tariffs amid ongoing trade tensions. The mismatch surfaced as U.S. special envoy John Coale works to normalize relations with Belarus, a process that appears to have outpaced the actual inventory.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A president announced a major deal for a product the seller says doesn't exist to sell. That's not a negotiation, that's a press release chasing a fact that hadn't been checked yet. Somewhere a farmer waiting on fertilizer prices to drop is going to notice the gap between the announcement and the loading dock.

Source: Read the original at NV → Scored: Scheming Weasel faster · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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