When President Trump issued an abrupt order last month compelling the production of glyphosate, the controversial weedkiller known as Roundup, he angered health activists who have long campaigned to ban the product for its links to cancer.
But largely overshadowed in the furor was the order’s mention of something contentious in another way: the manufacture of munitions used by the United States military.
Bayer, which makes glyphosate, is also the only company in the United States that manufactures a form of elemental phosphorus called white phosphorus, which it uses to make the weedkiller. That white phosphorus is also used to make munitions deployed as smoke screens and incendiary devices that can violently burn property or people.
Concerns about the availability of phosphorus for defense played a significant role in Mr. Trump’s move to deem Bayer’s operations a national security priority, according to two people with direct knowledge of the administration’s deliberations. One of the individuals also stressed its importance in light of recent United States military actions.
When asked about the significance of munitions in the Trump executive order, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a phone call, “The president made this decision based on national security priorities.” She added that the administration is funding research into alternatives to the herbicide glyphosate.
Bayer’s place in America’s military and industrial supply chain is a little-known aspect of a German company that’s behind household pharmaceuticals including Aspirin and Alka-Seltzer. White phosphorus ignites spontaneously when it comes in contact with oxygen. It produces a thick white smoke and can reach temperatures high enough to burn through metal.
Bayer, through its acquisition of Monsanto in 2018, operates the only facility in the United States that produces white phosphorus. It is in Soda Springs, Idaho, and uses phosphate rock the company mines locally.
Bayer uses most of that white phosphorus to make the glyphosate in Roundup, a powerful weedkiller that is a cornerstone of American food production. Roundup has been the target of thousands of lawsuits for its alleged health harms, and the company has already spent billions of dollars on settlements.
The company has pushed measures in Congress, as well as in state legislatures across the country, that would shield it from such lawsuits. Bayer has also petitioned the Supreme Court to weigh in on a case that could limit the company’s liability. The court is scheduled to hear arguments in that case in April.
Bayer also supplies some white phosphorous, via intermediaries, to the United States military, which uses it to fill white phosphorus munitions at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas.
President Trump’s executive order declared elemental phosphorus crucial to “military readiness and national defense,” and ordered measures to ensure a continued supply. It’s a key component, the order said, in smoke, illumination and incendiary devices, as well as a critical component in semiconductors used in defense technologies.
Bayer’s role as the sole U.S. maker of white phosphorus gives the German pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals giant a position of leverage in both the agriculture and defense industries. It also carries reputational risks for Bayer, associating the company with a widely criticized herbicide as well as with the U.S. military at a time when the president has put the country on a war footing.
Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a foreign policy think tank, said white phosphorus munitions were typically used in ground operations and by special forces, not in airstrikes of the kind the United States is pursuing in Iran.
But if, for example, the administration were to take action against drug cartels in Latin America or to launch a ground operation in Cuba, forces might be expected to use “these types of white phosphorus munitions to disguise their movements,” said Dr. Kavanaugh, formerly the director of the army strategy program at the RAND Corporation.
Using it isn’t illegal, though deploying it deliberately against civilians or in a civilian setting violates the laws of war.
Some environmental groups said the president’s focus on military applications is detracting attention from the health concerns linked to a weedkiller. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer has deemed glyphosate “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
Bayer’s Lobbying Efforts
Bayer spent more than $9 million last year to pay 53 lobbyists registered to represent the company’s interests with the White House and various federal agencies as well as in Congress, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks lobbying and campaign finance data.
Some of the Bayer lobbyists have close ties to the Trump campaign and administration. Among them is Brian Ballard, who raised more than $50 million for Trump’s 2024 campaign, according to Federal Election Commission filings, and whose former partners include the White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and the attorney general, Pam Bondi.
In June, Bill Anderson, Bayer’s chief executive, met with Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to request an update on glyphosate as well as the Supreme Court case, according to internal emails obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity through a public records request.
“We’re getting a much clearer picture of the unfettered access one of most powerful pesticide corporations in the world has to top officials,” said Nathan Donley, environmental health director at the center, which sued the administration over glyphosate, saying the E.P.A. was ignoring independent science on glyphosate’s links to cancer.
Brian Leake, a spokesman for Bayer, said the company “meets with agencies as a normal part of the regulatory process” and that the company has been “transparent about our position on these topics and very public about the issues we face as a company.”
Ms. Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said that “to suggest the administration has succumbed to lobbying efforts in the decision making process, on this issue or any issue for that matter, is completely false.”
The administration’s actions on glyphosate have been deeply unpopular among parts of Mr. Trump’s political base, including some supporters of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. The corps of health conscious and mostly female voters had embraced Mr. Trump for his pledge to address Americans’ concerns about “toxins in our environments and pesticides in our food.”
There has also been criticism of the company’s lobbying efforts from within the Republican Party. Speaking on the House floor on Feb. 20, Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, criticized Bayer’s lobbying drive, saying, “All three branches of this government are under siege by lobbyists and lawyers from a German company named Bayer.”
Uses of ‘Willy Pete’
White phosphorus, sometimes known by the nickname Willy Pete, can be used as a smoke screen to mask troop movements or to mark targets. But it can severely burn people who come into contact with it.
In 2023 the Biden administration said it was looking into reports by Amnesty International and in the Washington Post that Israel had used white phosphorus supplied by the United States in Lebanon in violation of international law. Israel has denied it used white phosphorus illegally.
“It has horrible humanitarian consequences,” said Bonnie Docherty, a senior adviser at Human Rights Watch and director of the Armed Conflict and Civilian Protection Initiative at Harvard Law School. “It causes really deep burns,” she said. “It’s notorious because it burns when exposed to oxygen, and wounds often reignite when bandages are removed.”
The concern within the Trump administration is that if Bayer’s glyphosate business doesn’t receive protections, the United States could lose both its sole domestic supplier of the weedkiller, as well as its sole domestic source of white phosphorus for defense and other applications. Bayer executives have said publicly that the company could stop selling Roundup altogether because of the billions of dollars that the company has paid out toward its Roundup litigation.
“Right now, there’s a single point of failure in Soda Springs,” said Matt Scholz, a senior project manager at the Sustainable Phosphorus Alliance and a research professor at Arizona State University, referring to the site in Idaho where the Bayer subsidiary makes white phosphorus. “It does give pause that there’s a lack of redundancy for something that’s so essential.”
In recent weeks the administration has enacted a string of policies favorable to Bayer. In October, the federal government approved Bayer’s bid to open a new phosphate mine in Idaho. Then late last year, the Trump administration backed Bayer in the Supreme Court case, which could block many of the Roundup lawsuits.
On Feb. 17, Bayer moved to end the bulk of its current Roundup litigation, proposing a $7.25 billion class-action settlement. The next day, Mr. Trump issued his executive order in support of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate.
“It’s been an exceptionally good few weeks for Bayer,” said Nora Freeman Engstrom, a professor at Stanford Law School who has studied Bayer’s litigation and lobbying strategy.
Last week, the Trump administration filed a brief with the Supreme Court saying it formally backed Bayer in its case before the court. That legal brief referred only to food security concerns.
Hiroko Tabuchi covers pollution and the environment for The Times. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years in Tokyo and New York.
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