On February 18, Donald Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) citing the Defense Production Act of 1950 as authority to effectively subsidize domestic production of glyphosate, the key ingredient in Bayer’s popular “Roundup” herbicide, and to shield manufacturers from liability.
Roundup was formerly produced by Monsanto, which Bayer purchased and absorbed in 2018.
The contamination of the food supply with glyphosate is a major health concern for many Americans, including a large number who voted for Trump as members of the “Make America Healthy Again” or “MAHA” movement.
MAHA was splintered out from the broader health freedom movement in Augus 2024, when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. ended his presidential run to ally with Trump, rebranding his own campaign with a play on Trump’s “Make America Great Again” or “MAGA” slogan.
The quid pro quo for bringing a large proportion of the health freedom movement on board with the Trump campaign was a position for Kennedy as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The pretext offered by Trump in his Executive Order is that ensuring an adequate supply of glyphosate is a matter of “national security”.
There is only one domestic supplier of glyphosate-based herbicides, the order states, requiring importation to meet the agricultural industry’s demand for it. A “Fact Sheet” accompanying the order states that it’s aimed at protecting the food supply from “hostile foreign actors.”
That pretext was also propagated by Kennedy, who promised to “always tell the American people the truth” in a statement emphasizing that pesticides and herbicides are “toxic by design, engineered to kill living organisms”, and that their widespread use puts Americans’ health “at risk.”
“Unfortunately,” Kennedy continued, “our agricultural system depends heavily on these chemicals.” He suggested that if the supply of glyphosate “disappeared overnight,” the consequences would be “disastrous”, including falling crop yields, surging food prices, and a massive bankrupting of farms.
He defended Trump’s order on the grounds that the US relies on “adversarial nations” and “hostile actors” for its glyphosate supply.
Kennedy also said that the administration is “accelerating the transition to regenerative agriculture by expanding farming systems that rebuild soil, increase biodiversity, improve water retention, and reduce reliance on synthetic chemicals, including pre-harvest desiccation.”
The problem is that Kennedy’s proclaimed goal of moving away from the systemic poisoning of the food supply is irreconcilable with his support for Trump’s order.
In fact, Trump’s order dismissed health concerns by describing glyphosate-laden foods as both “affordable” and “healthy”. Protecting the glyphosate supply is, according to Trump, “essential to protecting the health and safety of Americans.”
That characterization belies any intention to transition away from its use and betrays a very different motive.
Bayer’s Financial Stake in Glyphosate
Introduced onto the market in 1974, the use of glyphosate as an herbicide has long concerned scientists investigating its effects on the environment and human health.
In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an agency of the World Health Organization (WHO), classified glyphosate as a probable carcinogen.
Monsanto has lost several lawsuits where plaintiffs alleged that Roundup had caused their cancer, resulting in the company paying more than $10 billion to resolve litigation while insisting that its product is safe.
Apart from concerns about glyphosate causing cancer, it disrupts the gut microbiome, which can cause many downstream health harms.
Bayer warned in August 2025 that if the US government didn’t shield the company from litigation, it could be forced to stop US production of Roundup.
In December 2025, a key study that Monsanto had relied on to support its claim of safety was retracted due to “serious ethical concerns regarding the independence and accountability of the authors of this article and the academic integrity of the carcinogenicity studies presented.”
The day before Trump issued the order, Bayer announced a $7.25 billion class settlement agreement aimed at ending all current and future claims of liability for its Roundup product causing Non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
The statement noted that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Donald Trump has continued to deny that glyphosate is carcinogenic—a curious position for an administration ostensibly aiming to ween the agricultural industry off the herbicide.
Bayer’s statement also noted that the US Supreme Court will review the argument that it failed to adequately warn Roundup users of the health risks—with the company maintaining that any such lawsuits are “preempted by federal law” owing to the EPA’s continued insistence under Trump that no such cancer warning is required.
The Executive Order’s False Pretext
There is an irreconcilable disconnect between MAHA’s goal of eliminating toxic chemicals from the food supply and Trump’s executive order.
One could argue against banning glyphosate use in the US on the grounds it would increase food costs and put farmers out of business. Opposition to an outright ban, therefore, could be reconciled with the goals of Kennedy’s MAHA movement.
But Trump didn’t just say he won’t ban glyphosate. He acted to protect Bayer’s financial interests in its continued use.
On its face, the transition to regenerative agriculture that Kennedy advocates is not facilitated but impeded by the act of effectively subsidizing domestic glyphosate production and shielding producers from liability.
Besides Trump’s description of contaminated foods as “healthy”, the claim that this is necessary for “national security” strains credulity.
The true threat to the supply of glyphosate isn’t foreign “adversaries” but Bayer’s litigation exposure—and Trump’s mercantilist trade policies.
The largest exporter of glyphosate-based herbicides to the US is China. The claim that China is a hostile adversary threatening to restrict supply conceals the adverse economic impact of Trump’s own actions.
According to 360iResearch, tariffs imposed by Trump in early 2025 have “reverberated across glyphosate supply chains and market accessibility.” A 10 percent tax on imports from China commenced on February 4, followed by “an escalation to 20 percent for select agri-inputs”. With 99 percent of glyphosate volumes sourced from China, “these measures pose considerable cost pressures for downstream distributors and end users.”
Thus, the supposed supply threat relates to the rising cost of glyphosate in the US is a direct consequence of Trump’s own anti-free-trade economic policies, with tariffs serving as an effective tax on US consumers, who ultimately pay the costs in higher prices at the store.
Simply stated, tariffs benefit privileged industries at the expense of the rest of society.
The executive order is intended to serve Bayer and “fix” a problem of Trump’s own creation—masked in rhetoric of “national security” to appease his supporters, including Americans who considered their vote for Trump “a Vote for Kennedy”.
Many of Kennedy’s supporters, however, aren’t buying it.
Health Freedom Advocates Protest
Attorney Tom Renz responded to Kennedy’s statement on X by protesting,
Trump provided what will effectively be immunity for pesticide makers that are knowingly poisoning people. These companies knew the dangers of glyphosate for decades but hid them.
Trump is “protecting their profits”, Renz said, instead of helping the victims or helping farmers “transition away from these poisons”.
In another X post, Renz wrote,
The real problem is that shifting away from cancer-causing poisons like glyphosate would allow farmers to use heirloom seeds again. They could save some of their harvested seeds to replant instead of relying exclusively on big ag/big pharma companies for seeds.
Trump’s executive order, Renz said, “wasn’t about protecting food—it was about enriching corporate cronies.”
Responding in a Substack article to Trump supporters claiming that his order does not provide glyphosate manufacturers with legal immunity, Renz wrote,
I have heard the spin. I have heard the argument that this is not “immunity” in the technical sense. . . . The practical goal is clear. Limit or extinguish the ability of injured Americans to recover damages from manufacturers whose product has been found by juries to cause cancer. That is immunity in everything but name and it’s just another gift for elitists and global mega-corporations.
If Trump’s purpose were to transition away from glyphosate dependency, Renz added, “Then explain why these maneuvers consistently favor large chemical manufacturers over small farmers, landscapers, and consumers.”
Vani Hari, an outspoken critic of the poisoning of our food supply also known as “The Food Babe”, responded to Kennedy’s statement by saying,
We can secure supply chains without giving the most evil corporations in the world immunity. Bayer is working for immunity in state bills, the federal farm bill, in Supreme Court decisions and EOs to get away with murder. It’s the most disturbing situation within our food system we will ever fight against.
Zen Honeycutt, founder of the health freedom coalition Moms Across America, said,
It’s been a year. Not a single thing has been done by the EPA to reduce our children’s and families’ exposure to pesticides. In fact regulations have only gotten worse, loosened and more harmful pesticides have been approved. There is no excuse for this.
The Florida branch of Children’s Health Defense, an organization Kennedy co-founded and stepped down from to serve Trump as HHS Secretary, posted a petition from Moms Across America calling for the executive order to be rescinded. The group prefaced the link by saying,
🚨WE DO NOT CONSENT TO BEING POISONED🚨
This week, @POTUS signed an executive order and put glyphosate—one of the most toxic herbicides—above the health of Americans. This is not “national security” and this is not MAHA.
The Waterkeeper Alliance, which Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. stepped down from in 2020 after serving as president of the group for over two decades, similarly criticized Trump’s executive order as “Dangerous”, saying,
Instead of addressing decades of independent research by experts linking glyphosate—a widely used herbicide—to cancer, liver damage, endocrine disruption, and other serious health effects, the executive order pushes for more production.
Glyphosate and other pesticides already pollute our water. Studies have shown these toxic chemicals are widespread in streams and rivers. Despite this, the executive order doubles down, prioritizing the chemical industry’s interests over community safety.
Even more alarming, the order grants legal immunity to chemical producers following federal directives. Communities harmed by contamination could find it even harder to hold chemical companies accountable. And, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is now directed to prioritize chemical production even if it increases exposure risks.
The 2026 Farm Bill (H.R. 7567) is being advanced on a pretext of protecting farmers, land, and water, the alliance added, but instead contains provisions to ensure continued use of pesticides.
Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which produces an annual report listing the foods most highly contaminated with pesticides, responded to the executive order by saying he “can’t envision a bigger middle finger to every MAHA mom than this.”
Kennedy’s support for the order is difficult to reconcile with his past activism against the continued use of toxic pesticides and herbicides.
In fact, he was the attorney for the plaintiff on a case where a jury in 2018 ordered Monsanto to pay nearly $290 million to Dewayne Johnson, a school groundskeeper dying of cancer who argued it was caused by Roundup.
As Kennedy said at the time, “The jury found Monsanto acted with malice and oppression because they knew what they were doing was wrong and doing it with reckless disregard for human life.”
The simplest explanation is that loyalty to Trump is a condition of his employment as HHS Secretary—a clear problem with the approach of trying to change the system from within.
The key lesson for health freedom advocates is that the requisite change won’t happen from the top down but must come from the bottom up. Acquiescing to or defending such crony capitalism out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to either Trump or Kennedy is even more counterproductive than the executive order itself.
