Bayer executives had warned for years that the company was on the brink of pulling its weedkiller Roundup from the U.S. market.
But when Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in May released the first Make America Healthy Again report, blaming the chemical for Americans’ health problems in an official government document, the company says it told the Trump administration that the walls were closing in.
Bayer’s CEO met with top White House officials last year and said the company could absorb billions of dollars in litigation costs from lawsuits alleging that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, caused cancer — but it couldn’t also face down regulatory uncertainty and what executives saw as the prospect of a government ban.
It might leave the U.S. market, it told the White House, taking with it one of the most widely used products on U.S. farmland. For the White House, Bayer’s warning also underscored ongoing concerns about phosphorus, the critical mineral used to make glyphosate, for which Bayer is the sole domestic producer. Phosphorus is also used to make weapons, fertilizer and semiconductors.
