How Biotech Giant Bayer Landed A Win That Made Maha Furious

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.

“The business case for staying in the glyphosate business was really hanging on one last single thread,” Matthias Berninger, Bayer’s head of public affairs, told POLITICO over the course of two interviews describing the company’s discussions with the administration. “And with that, we just asked for clarity.”

The White House provided it in February. Trump signed an executive order that boosted domestic glyphosate production. The Trump administration had already approved Bayer’s permit to mine elemental phosphorus in Idaho and sided with the company in front of the Supreme Court.

But it was the executive order that caused the most significant political backlash, angering the MAHA movement and leaving Kennedy to “walk the plank.” 

The details of Bayer’s conversations with senior White House officials, including multiple meetings involving CEO Bill Anderson and top Trump advisers including chief of staff Susie Wiles, have not previously been reported and shed new light on how the company pressed the administration to intervene.

In doing so, the White House had to choose between two important parts of President Donald Trump’s 2024 coalition: MAHA, which believes the herbicide is poison, and farmers, who feared losing glyphosate would jeopardize their bottom line.

The president ultimately sided with the agriculture industry, taking Bayer’s threat to leave “seriously enough to sign [an] executive order that caused us a lot of political heartburn,” said a White House official, granted anonymity to discuss the considerations that led to the policy decisions.

The official, however, insisted that the administration was concerned with protecting the supply chain for all kinds of critical minerals, irrespective of Bayer’s lobbying. The arguments the company made, the official said, were already being made inside the administration, well before Bayer made any demands.

“Bayer could have come in and done a clown dance and left, and we probably would’ve done the same thing, because we did it based on people on the [National Security Council] and the Commerce Department and elsewhere that were thinking and talking about this,” the official said. “The reality is we did this out of national interest, Bayer just happened to be the beneficiary of that.”

The official denied that the mine permit approval was tied to Bayer’s influence, saying the administration is pro-mining. The Supreme Court brief was in line with the administration’s stance on federal preemption of state laws, which it supports on other issues like artificial intelligence and animal welfare, the official said.

Around the time that the Trump administration approved the mine permit, China tightened export controls on critical minerals, heightening U.S. concerns about supply chain vulnerabilities and underscoring the risk of losing domestic phosphorus production.

“I think these national security aspects became much more real and much less theoretical after the two presidents met last year,” Berninger said, referring to Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. China has the world’s largest manufacturing capacity for glyphosate, and it wouldn’t be the only supplier if Bayer left the U.S.

Still, Trump’s decision left many in the MAHA movement feeling betrayed and threatening political retribution.

MAHA influencer Vani Hari, known for her blog “Food Babe,” said the policy choices would shape the next election.

“2026 will be decided based on what happens with glyphosate — mark my words,” she said in an email to POLITICO.

Leaders within grassroots MAHA organizations have said it undermines the movement’s credibility with people who only voted for Trump because they wanted to see Kennedy take on issues such as chemicals in food.

“I am highly doubtful that people who were Democrat and Independent, and who voted Republican for the first time [in 2024], are going to be motivated to vote Republican come midterms elections if nothing is done about pesticides,” said Zen Honeycutt, executive director of the activist group Moms Across America.

Environmental groups also remain skeptical of Bayer’s dire predictions.

“Selling glyphosate in America is a huge portion of their revenue, and so it's hard to know how seriously to take their threat,” said Lori Ann Burd, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This is a classic page out of the playbook.”

Honeycutt agreed and said Bayer could take other routes before exiting the market, such as offering safer herbicides or agreeing to put warning labels on its products.

“These manufacturers are crying to our government to get pity for their loss of profits,” Honeycutt said. “The real reason for their loss of profits is that they’re selling products that are harming and killing our children.”

The World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015.

Bayer denies its product is linked to cancer when used as directed and points to reviews by regulators including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has found glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.

The EPA is redoing parts of its analysis after a court ordered a new review in 2022, including "its evaluation of the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate," agency spokesperson Brigit Hirsch said. Hirsch said that evaluation should be released later this year, but advocates don't expect its cancer analysis to change.

A turning point for Bayer

Bayer’s lobbying picked up in 2024. The company launched a lobbying blitz in state legislatures, Congress and the courts to garner immunity against more allegations of cancer. It stood up a new lobbying group to make the case: The Modern Ag Alliance.

The effort followed billions of dollars in settlements for thousands of people claiming that Roundup is linked to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Bayer’s market cap had sunk to a multi-year low.

Bayer had made similar arguments about leaving the U.S. market to the Biden administration. Alex Jacquez, a special assistant to the president on Biden’s National Economic Council, said Bayer’s lobbyists privately told White House officials in meetings in 2024 that the litigation might force the company to stop selling glyphosate in the U.S., arguing that that could lead to higher food prices.

But it was the MAHA report, spearheaded by Kennedy and released in May 2025, that Bayer considered an unprecedented threat. The report, which targeted the root causes of health problems plaguing Americans, highlighted glyphosate as one of the environmental toxins potentially driving up chronic disease rates — though it did not call for a ban and committed to working with farmers to find a way to use the product less without untenable upheaval.

Still, the industry backlash was swift.

The MAHA report “really forced everybody to make a choice, to take sides,” said Bayer’s Berninger.

Farm groups were desperate to protect one of the most commonly used herbicides in the U.S., and expressed frustration that White House officials had written the first MAHA report without offering opportunities for input from farm and industry groups. The White House quickly moved to make amends with one of the president’s most important constituencies, hosting dozens of meetings with top trade groups representing corn farmers, produce growers, cattle ranchers and the chemical industry.

Rebeckah Freeman Adcock, vice president of government relations for the International Fresh Produce Association, which participated in White House meetings following the first MAHA report, called the fight a source of “constant exhaustion” for farmers “who are trying to look for things that help them farm more efficiently.”

Ultimately, chemical companies and their allies in the farming industry were successful: The second report from the MAHA Commission released in September steered clear of policy recommendations that would disrupt glyphosate use.

But Bayer and its allies were not reassured. They continued to meet with administration officials and the White House, arguing their domestic glyphosate production in the U.S. remained in question. Berninger said their plea was “linked to” the administration’s decisions to dub elemental phosphorus — the key ingredient in Roundup — a critical mineral, officials’  regulatory approval in October for Bayer’s mine, the executive order and the Trump administration’s support at the Supreme Court.

The Trump administration’s Supreme Court support was a 180-degree turn from the Biden administration’s position, where officials sought to thread the needle of supporting states’ regulatory rights while also protecting the EPA’s authority to regulate pesticides. Berninger said the brief from Trump’s Justice Department was even more valuable to the company than the executive order.

Berninger declined to say whether Bayer asked the White House specifically to deploy the Defense Production Act as the president did, but an executive order was one of several options its lobbyists discussed with officials.

“We discussed the different options to provide clarity, and the executive order was one of them,” said Berninger. “But ultimately that's a government decision to go down that route.”

Blindsided inside the administration

Even though the move proved to be politically volatile, officials kept the White House’s plans to invoke the Defense Production Act in an executive order – and Bayer’s involvement – close to the vest.

“Bayer is doing this on their own,” said one industry expert, contrasting the company’s strategy with how farming and chemical groups often work together in Washington. “What I have not seen is significant coalition strategies involving major farm groups that are carrying all of this water, going around town, doing the meetings.”

The person added, “many in the ag community were surprised by DPA.”

Just a tiny group of people were aware the executive order was under consideration. Major farm groups, the House Agriculture committee and the Environmental Protection Agency were also largely left out of discussions around the executive order, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Even Kennedy, who said he knew the executive order was coming, seemed to have little advance warning, taking multiple days to form a lengthy statement addressing growing MAHA anger. He eventually came to the administration’s defense, backing the president’s national defense argument. 

USDA, which is tasked with implementing parts of the executive order, was aware the order was coming, according to two other people familiar. USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden had been in discussion with the White House about national security implications for farm inputs, including glyphosate supply chains.  

Jacquez, the Biden administration official, said that the use of DPA was a clear sign of theTrump administration’s favor.

“If we wanted to signal to somebody that their product was important to us, this is exactly what we would write,” said Jacquez, who worked on DPA issues at the Biden White House.

Rachel Shin and Ellie Borst contributed to this report.