CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

DOJ probes US fertilizer market for possible price fixing

Bloomberg News | March 4, 2026 | 

The Justice Department has been investigating whether several leading producers of commercial fertilizers colluded to raise prices, according to people familiar with the matter.

The companies whose conduct is under scrutiny include phosphate and potash suppliers Nutrien Ltd. and Mosaic Co., as well as CF Industries Holdings Inc., Koch Inc. and Norway’s Yara International ASA, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing a confidential investigation. CF Industries, Koch, Yara and Nutrien control most of the nitrogen-based fertilizer sold in the US.

The probe is examining companies’ pricing practices for possible civil and criminal antitrust violations, the people said. The investigation is in the early stages and is being run out of the DOJ antitrust division’s Chicago office, they said.

Only a handful of companies control the supply of most fertilizer in the US, which has raised concern among farmers and government officials. The Biden administration also expressed concerns about high fertilizer prices due to market concentration and the impact of the war in Ukraine.

The companies haven’t been accused of wrongdoing by antitrust officials, and investigations don’t necessarily lead to charges or lawsuits.

Nutrien didn’t have an immediate comment. The other companies and the Justice Department didn’t respond to requests for comment. A US Department of Agriculture spokesperson referred to DOJ for comment.

Mosaic shares fell as much as 4.3% to the lowest price since mid-January. CF Industries dropped as much as 5.5%, the most since November, while Nutrien shares were down as much as 2.9%.

Key priority

The investigation reflects a key priority of both political parties to police conduct that increases costs for farmers and consumers. Addressing high food costs has been a goal of the Trump administration’s response to Americans’ growing dissatisfaction on the rising cost of living, which propelled Democrats to victories over Republicans in several key elections in November.

Potash and phosphate fertilizer prices have eased since last fall after spiking as a result of President Donald Trump’s trade war. Still, prices remain historically elevated, and the escalating conflict in the Middle East is reigniting worries about reliance on foreign fertilizers. Disruptions in the Gulf are already pushing prices higher for urea, a form of nitrogen fertilizer widely used for corn and other crops. The higher fertilizer costs have put a strain on US farmers struggling with low crop prices and shrinking markets.

Nutrien and Mosaic control about 90% of the production capacity of both potash and phosphate fertilizers, according to agriculture industry watchdog Farm Action. Nutrien, CF Industries, Koch and Yara control about 82% of nitrogen-based fertilizers, Farm Action says.

Meanwhile, USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden has accused Nutrien and Mosaic of colluding to limit US fertilizer supply and control prices. In January public comments to the National Agricultural Law Center, Vaden called the two companies a “duopoly” and said the administration will “do everything it can” to ensure affordable fertilizer prices for farmers.

Joint venture

Vaden cited a Canadian joint venture between Mosaic and Nutrien, Canpotex Ltd., as an example of how the companies “collude to control prices up there.” While such a venture doesn’t exist in the US, Vaden said the companies have constrained supply, “driving up the price that farmers pay.”

Vaden didn’t mention the antitrust probe and it’s unclear if the dynamics he referenced are part of the Justice Department’s investigation.

While the first Trump and Biden administrations increased antitrust enforcement in the tech sector, the agriculture industry has seen less action, despite a rise in concentration.

That has left just four companies in control of more than half of all beef, poultry and pork processed in the US, while a different quartet of firms controls majorities of soybean and corn seeds, according to Farm Action.

The Trump administration has made a series of moves to boost competition in the sector. In September, the Justice Department and Agriculture Department signed an agreement to police competition in agriculture markets. About a month later, Trump ordered a federal investigation into the meatpacking industry, blaming “majority foreign-owned” companies for soaring beef prices.

In December, Trump issued a directive for the DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the US food supply chain for potential price fixing and other anti-competitive behavior that drives up costs of goods such as meat, seeds and fertilizer.

The Justice Department is also investigating pricing practices among the largest US egg suppliers.

Executive order

Trump in February signed an executive order to protect domestic supplies of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides, noting that there is only one domestic producer of both materials.

Mosaic is the top US fertilizer producer and makes almost half of the phosphate-based crop nutrients used by US farmers. The company in 2023 asked the Commerce Department to investigate phosphate fertilizers from Morocco, which led to added duties on those imports that are still currently in place.

Early in February, corn farmer groups in Iowa and Texas both pressed Attorney General Pam Bondi for an update on the DOJ’s work in the fertilizer market.

“The current state of the farm economy is dire,” Hagen Hunt, president of the Texas Corn Producers Association, wrote in a letter to Bondi. “While the prices farmers receive for their crops has softened, the costs of the essential nutrients needed to grow them remain artificially inflated.”

(By Josh Sisco and Ilena Peng)

LME fines PAC Global Services Spain for warehouse violations

Reuters | March 4, 2026 | 

The London Metal Exchange fined warehouse operator PAC Global Services Spain (PGS) 250,000 pounds ($334,175) in a disciplinary action due to breaches of its rules, the LME said on Wednesday.

The exchange, the world’s oldest and largest market for industrial metals, listed eight violations of its warehouse agreement by PGS in a members’ notice.

The most serious violation was found during an investigation of a PGS warehouse in Taiwan, where it found copper stored in an open yard outside the facility.

“The storage of metal on warrant outside of an LME approved shed is an egregious breach of the warehouse agreement … and as such the financial penalty reflects this,” the notice said.

PGS runs 39 LME-registered warehouses in Europe and Asia, according to the LME website.

The LME is owned by Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd.

($1 = 0.7481 pounds)

(By Eric Onstad; Editing by Sharon Singleton and Mark Potter)

 

You Don’t Miss What Doesn’t Exist

by Don Fitz / February 2nd, 2026

“Anthropause” is an amazing word and the latest book about it is an eye-opener. Stan Cox’s Anthropause: The Beauty of Degrowth (2026, Seven Stories Press), does what far too few degrowth books do – it first focuses readers’ attention to the positive experiences we could enjoy in a society less dedicated to producing unnecessary stuff. It then details the destructiveness of overproduction.

As the inside jacket describes,

In the spring of 2020, people worldwide found themselves confined to their homes due to pandemic lockdown orders. Global carbon emissions suddenly plunged 8.8%, bodies of water became noticeably clearer, and animal life returned to the spaces that humans deserted. Scientists deemed this phenomenon as “anthropause,” as nature flourished in response to the decrease in human activity. For a moment, the world witnessed the beauty of degrowth.

Of course, this was not without immense human suffering, exacerbated by vaccination denial and insufficient treatment. It was nothing like John Bellamy Foster’s “planned degrowth,” which is based on designing how to minimize harmful effects of reducing unnecessary and harmful production.

Origins and Futures

Cox familiarizes readers with classic concepts of degrowth, including Herman Daly’s steady state economy, André Gorz’ décroissance (reducing material production), and George Kallis’ analysis of “throughput.” His ideas go far as he stands on the shoulders of recent works such as Jason Hickel’s Less Is More (2020) and Kōhei Seitō’s Slow Down (English edition, 2024).

Anthropause demystifies the term “degrowth” by explaining it in ways the average reader can understand. Cox makes it clear that the difficulty is not really understanding what degrowth would be, but rather the controversy it would arouse and the enormous political barriers that such an unprecedented alteration in human behavior would face.

The book covers two changes that could well become classic examples of positive outcomes of degrowth that people would experience in their daily lives. The first is auditory. Imagine a world without noisy electrical gadgets like leaf blowers and lawn movers. It would be a world where people could actually hear sounds that were prevalent only a few decades ago: insects, bird songs and children playing. Another Covid19 event happened when people in San Francisco could hear more vocalizations of the white-crowned sparrow as traffic noise dropped.

The other everyday (or everynight) experience that could be reborn is actually seeing the stars that ancient cultures found essential to civilization throughout their existence. Eliminating the blinding light of businesses and drastically reducing street and car lights will re-grow the human skill of navigating in darkness.

The need to do both of these is more than aesthetic pleasure. Deafening noise and noxious lights unnecessarily use energy, the major source of environmental crises, whether fossil fuels or “alternative.” Excess noise damages health in a variety of ways. Over-lighting contributes to the perilous insect die-off and disrupts many animal behaviors. It is most serious for bats who have an unpaid job of improving human health by devouring mosquitoes.

Land and Farms

One of the strongest parts of Anthropause grows out of the author’s 25 years at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. He explains that by changing farming and reducing land usage we could have food that tastes better, is more nutritious, and contains fewer toxic chemicals. We would be healthier, have fewer diseases and enjoy more natural spaces in which to spend time.

Native Americans would have large amounts of land returned, allowing them to nurture and care for it as their ancestors did for millennia. As consumption of meat decreases there will be fewer meatpacking workers averaging two work-related amputations per week.

Cox traces the current terrible state of US food production to annual crop mono-cultures, soil tillage and factory “farming” (CAFOs, concentrated animal-feeding operations). Strongly connected is the fact that 90% of US farmland is devoted to four crops: corn, soybean, cotton and wheat. Of these, only wheat is used mainly for human food.

Changes called for would include an end to CAFOs, encouraging small farms with multiple crops, and a huge decrease in land used to grow animal feed. Degradation of farmland has been a long time coming and degrowing it to a more rational status will not occur overnight and will not happen without massive opposition from Big Ag.

But there would be a drawback from degrown farming – most would not have fresh strawberries and tomatoes in winter. Degrowth would require overcoming the belief that those in the rich world should have instant gratification of every whim, regardless of consequences.

Yes, the Military Must Be Degrown

Another area where Anthropause shines is the way it takes on militarism. It is disappointing that only a few degrowth articles devote a full analysis to the plague of militarism, if they address it at all. [For a noteworthy exception see Burton and Lin (2023).] Perhaps the most significant benefit from degrowing the nuclear behemoth is that people would have less reason to worry about the extinction of humanity and millions of other species. The threat includes greenhouse gas release by military production and employment.

An immediate quality of life improvement would be reduction of deaths by bombs, starvation and disease. Even more lives are shortened by toxins that war production spreads across the globe.

Degrowth of militarism would benefit those living near US bases and the 800 US bases across the globe. They would worry less about being “kicked off their land,” being poisoned by ubiquitous toxins, and enduring high crime rates, especially for rape.

As with land usage and most other aspects of degrowing, there would be bumps on the road. The first would be finding jobs for the 3 million people who work directly in military employment, plus those working in support industries. Also, “zombie pollution” will long remain in areas where military bases are shut down.

Concerns

Despite its great contributions, I do have a few concerns with the book. First, I was surprised when reading a couple of approving references to “renewable energy.” No energy is renewable. By now it is almost trite to repeat “Even though the sun may shine, the rivers may flow, and the wind may blow, the minerals to transform what they collect into usable energy is finite and exhaustible.” Wars for alternative energy can be as deadly as those for fossil fuels.

A book only mentioned in the index is Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975). It is a 1960-70s era fantasy of what an ecological society might look like, including new social norms, interpersonal relationships, politics, military and spies inside of it. Ecotopia weaves complex themes together in ways that authors since have not accomplished.

Third, the book’s brief review of air conditioning should inspire readers to see Cox’s more extensive analysis in Losing Our Cool (2010) Missing in Anthropause were suggestions for reducing air conditioning. Since a major complaint about it is over-air conditioned buildings, legal routes for degrowth jump out at us: Pass laws limiting temperature lows in schools, public buildings and businesses.

Last, Anthropause has a very good discussion of the very bad realities of private cars. Yet, it seemed that the goal to “reduce” aimed too short. Why not aim to make them as extinct as CAFOs? The book makes a good case that we could live better without cars. There would not have been 7,388 pedestrians killed by cars in 2021. The ongoing switch to SUVs only increases dangers. In addition to CO2 emissions, particulate matter which spews to roadsides is even worse with heavier E-cars. The need for multiple parking spaces per car results in more and more impervious surfaces, which increases flooding.

However, abolishing private cars does not mean getting rid of all cars. I fondly remember reserving a car when I worked at St. Louis State Hospital for 25 years. I just called the car pool guy and found a time one would be available. I did not have to worry about maintenance or license plates because the hospital department took care of it. A degrown world would be able to manage individual transportation needs with walkable communities that relied on some combination of walking, cycling, horseback riding, carriages, motorcycles, and golf carts (for those with disabilities).

New Thoughts

The contributions of Anthropause are mind-bending. It should be on the bookshelf of all of the growing number of degrowth enthusiasts. To repeat, its most significant feature is its focus on how people could enjoy degrowth. Like other recent authors, Cox points out that capitalism requires growth, making it incompatible with human and environmental needs. Similarly, he notes that degrowth inspires people to struggle against racism and colonialism. Capitalist growth is based on creating a poor world for the rich world to exploit and that poor world is populated mainly by people of color, especially those in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Cox explains that some define “degrowth as decline.” Environmentalists with this approach emphasize the need to remove negative things, processes and attitudes that permeate US life. Though he covers this thoroughly, he actually prefers the definition of “growth at emancipation.” This perspective aims to liberate humanity from social ills that result in sickness, detachment from nature, and loss of habitat by “living within ecological limits.” People can actually be happier hearing natural sounds, seeing stars at night, eating food that tastes like food, enjoying natural spaces and being freed from military agony.

This points in a direction that could make degrowth at least somewhat attractive to the general public. Since dislike of advertisement seems to be close to universal, that might be a good plank for degrowth platforms. Cox’s book on Losing our Cool observes that people dislike over-air-conditioned buildings. There could be wide support for regulations putting limits on how much temperatures can be lowered in schools, public buildings and businesses. This could well accustom people to reducing air conditioning at home and perhaps inspire them to enjoy the outdoors in summer.

Let’s take this a step further. People will give up what they have not experienced much faster than they will abandon what they have become attached to. There was widespread dislike of automobiles until people were forced to buy them by destruction of street cars. In early 2026, there is large-scale rejection of data centers, a big source of CO2 emissions and land destruction.

This manifests Kōhei Saitō’s phrase “Slow down.” A next step for degrowth could be halting the constant introduction of new gadgets that rarely improve anyone’s life. After all, Ya don’t crave what ain’t nowhere.

• A version of the article appeared in Green Social Thought

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Don Fitz (fitzdon@aol.com) writes for and is on the Editorial Board of Green Social Thought where this article first appeared. He has been the St. Louis Green Party candidate for County Assessor and candidate of the Missouri Green Party for State Auditor and Governor. He is author of Cuban Health Care: The Ongoing Revolution (2020). Read other articles by Don.

10 Reasons Why ICE is Harassing Native Americans

Zoltan Grossman

 January 30, 2026

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“Show Me Your Papers” cartoon by Lalo Alcatraz (shared as “kartoonist” on r/Chicano, 2025)

ICE and Border Patrol are increasingly detaining Native American citizens, and ignoring or refusing to treat Tribal ID cards as proof of citizenship. Just north of where ICE killed Minneapolis rights monitor Renee Gold, agents have detained tribal citizens in the clearly Native neighborhood around Franklin Avenue, where the American Indian Movement was itself born to monitor police brutality. In much the same way, ICE often racially profiles immigrants who have become citizens.

Many tribal leaders are speaking out, accurately pointing out that the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act granted U.S. citizenship to Native peoples, alongside their own tribal citizenship, so ICE has absolutely zero legal basis for stopping any tribal citizen. It might be easy for non-Natives to assume that ICE is simply unaware of tribal citizens’ status, and with proper education and training they will treat Native people as equal citizens, and stop the harassment.

DHS post with “American Progress” recruitment ad (on X, July 23, 2025)

The problem is that ICE already knows full well that Native Americans are citizens.

Even when shown Tribal IDs and passports, many ICE agents have been dismissive or hostile. And unfortunately there’s a reason. The harassment and detention of Native Americans today is the latest episode in a long and deep history of colonizing Indigenous peoples at home and abroad.

Let’s connect the dots, to show why this trend of anti-Native harassment is no accident:

1. Many of the immigrants terrorized by ICE are themselves Indigenous, including those from Guatemala and southern Mexico. In 2019, Trump evoked an “invasion” of Central American refugees in “caravans,” and mocked their pleas for asylum. Guatemalans working at the Trump National Golf Club were ridiculed by a supervisor as “donkeys” and “dogs.” Last year, Trump cut funding for Indigenous language translation in immigration enforcement, and sought to deport Guatemalan unaccompanied children. These Indigenous immigrants, many of them fleeing conflicts fueled by the U.S., have borne the brunt of ICE mistreatment.
2. Ask the Native nations whose lands were crossed by the U.S.-Mexico border, such as Tohono O’odham and Kumeyaay, how for decades they’ve faced harassment by Border Patrol and ICE (and their predecessor agencies) and constantly forced to prove their citizenship or abandon their relatives south of the border. The militarization of the border and construction of the border wall increasingly cuts them off from family ties, cultural sites and knowledge, and the ability to economically trade and support each other. These tribes (and others bisected by the U.S.-Canada boundary) still face a constant struggle to safely cross the border.
3. There’s always been an overlap between anti-Native and anti-immigrant movements, and some politicians and agencies promote both forms of racism. A 2006 ICE raid on meatpacking plants was named “Operation Wagon Train.” When Elaine Willman, founder of the anti-Native Citizens Equal Rights Alliance, was on the Toppenish City Council in central Washington, she could have pit the local Mexican immigrant population and Yakama tribal members against each other, but she instead accused tribal sovereignty of “contributing to an increase in illegal immigration.”
4. Trump has explicitly opposed Native sovereignty, ever since he railed against tribal casino competitors in 1993. Starting in his first term, he used “Pocahontas” as a slur, hung a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office, oil pipelines and drilling on Native lands, slashed environmental regulations and climate funds that protect Native lands, waters, and sacred sites, cut federal programs that benefit tribes, began to take tribes out of trust, and much more. Last year he drastically cut tribal college funding, and his Department of Justice tried to make the preposterous argument that “birthright citizenship” does not apply to Native Americans. Previous administrations have not been friendly to tribal interests, to varying degrees, but Trump has taken it to a higher level, especially in his second term.
5. Department of Homeland Security recruitment ads for new ICE agents have blatantly evoked Manifest Destiny images of white supremacy that seemingly have nothing to do with immigration enforcement, including John Gast’s “American Progress” painting as “A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth defending.” And just who are these newly recruited agents? Back in 2020, it was common to see armed far-right militiamen threaten anti-Trump and Black Lives Matter marches, but now these paramilitaries are notably absent at even more widespread rallies. Perhaps that’s one reason that so many ICE agents wear masks, so they won’t be unmasked as Proud Boys or Three Percenters.
6. Anti-Indigenous theorists have usually equated tribal sovereignty with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and posed Native self-determination as “special rights” based on race, rather than on tribes’ political status as nations. But as I noted in a recent post, in the past few years they’re refocusing on the “dangers” of the growing opposition to settler colonialism, whether in Palestine, South Africa, or North America. They’re now concentrating their ire on Indigenous self-determination as a threat to settler states’ entitlement to land, and on Native Studies in education as a threat to the national narrative of progress. The MAGA message is shifting away from race and toward place, and who controls natural resources. And it’s no accident that Trump threatens to annex resource-rich Greenland, just when it’s poised to become the first independent Indigenous state in the Americas. The puzzle begins to fit together.
7. The connections between the colonization of Native America and the overseas extension of the American Empire long predate Trump. Western Army forts were the first U.S. military bases on foreign soil. The doctrine of “Manifest Destiny” was the template for the expansion of U.S. colonialism into the Caribbean, Hawai’i and other Pacific nations, the Philippines, and Vietnam. In his classic Facing West: the Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building, Richard Drinnon documented that the “Indian Wars,” Philippine-American War, and Vietnam War used identical tactics, and rhetoric of enemy territory as hostile “Indian country.” Drinnon concluded, “In each and every West, place itself was infinitely less important…than what the white settlers brought in their heads and hearts to that particular place. At each magic margin, their metaphysics of Indian-hating underwent a seemingly confirmatory ‘perennial rebirth.’…. All along, the obverse of Indian-hating had been the metaphysics of empire building…. Winning the West amounted to no less than winning the world.” Evoking this history, it’s no accident that the military deploys “Tomahawk” missiles, and helicopters named “Black Hawk,” “Apache,” and “Chinook.”
8. In Latin America, the source of most immigration into the U.S., Indigenous-led movements are increasingly being targeted by U.S. military and intelligence agencies in their counterinsurgency planning. The National Intelligence Council projected in 2005 that the “demands of free markets” will “drive indigenous movements, which so far have sought change through democratic means, to consider more drastic means.” The Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO), at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, applied this emerging doctrine in Military Review, by lumping together “Insurgencies, Terrorist Groups and Indigenous Movements,” particularly in Mexico. The FMSO’s Lt. Col. Geoffrey Demarest stated in his book Geoproperty that “The coming center of gravity of armed political struggles may be indigenous populations…” and that the Internet is increasingly being used by “Indigenous rebels, feminists, troublemakers…”
9. The so-called “Global War on Terror” grew from Iraq and Afghanistan into Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia, in the name of combating “Islamist terrorism.” Yet within all these countries, the main targets of the wars have been “tribal regions,” and the frontier language of Indian-fighting is becoming the lexicon of 21^st-century counterinsurgency. The “Global War on Terror” has morphed into a “Global War on Tribes” (as I noted in an article with that title). Counterinsurgency doctrine views “tribal regions” as festering cauldrons of “lawlessness” and “breeding grounds” for terrorism, unless the tribes themselves are divided against each other and turned against the empire’s enemies. Robert D. Kaplan brazenly wrote in 2004 that “the American military is back to the days of fighting the Indians,” and it’s no accident that in the 2011 raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, his military codename was “Geronimo.” The “Global War on Tribes” is first and foremost a grab for the many natural resources remaining on Indigenous lands, but also a war against the very existence of “tribal regions” that are not under centralized state control, and still retain collective forms of property and social organization.
10. The swings of the domestic Indian policy pendulum have always been tied into foreign and military affairs: the era of allotment and boarding schools with the age of imperial conquests and “English-Only” restrictions, the Indian New Deal with nonintervention abroad, the Termination Era with the Cold War against communism, tribal self-determination with the rise of national liberation movements, and the white backlash against tribal sovereignty with the far-right swing against multicultural societies. In U.S. military interventions at home or abroad, the existence of Indigenous peoples, lands, and lifeways has always been deemed a threat to the colonial order, and Trump’s administration is making that longstanding view more open and transparent with every statement and action. Restricting the rights of Native peoples and dispossessing their lands is the original disease of colonialism, not a side effect.

The fact that ICE and Border Patrol are now harassing and detaining Native citizens is a warning to the larger U.S. society. As federal Indian law scholar Felix Cohen wrote in 1953, “Like the miner’s canary,” U.S. treatment of Native peoples “marks the shift from fresh air to poison gas in our political atmosphere.” Trump began his second term by demonizing Haitians, Somalis, and Venezuelans, and is taking the next step by harassing Native citizens, and will then extend the repression to all citizens. ICE started as a bludgeon against immigrants, but is becoming a test case for expanding authoritarianism against everyone. Only by showing active solidarity with both immigrant and Indigenous communities (and other targeted communities), can we block his plans.

ICE knows that the rights of Native peoples and recent immigrants are connected, and more Americans should learn that too.

Zoltán Grossman is a Member of the Faculty in Geography and Native American and Indigenous Studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He earned his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Wisconsin in 2002. He is a longtime community organizer, and was a co-founder of the Midwest Treaty Network alliance for tribal sovereignty. He was author of Unlikely Alliances: Native and White Communities Join to Defend Rural Lands (University of Washington Press, 2017), and co-editor of Asserting Native Resilience: Pacific Rim Indigenous Nations Face the Climate Crisis (Oregon State University Press, 2012). His faculty website is at https://sites.evergreen.edu/zoltan