President Donald Trump has invoked the Defense Production Act to prioritise domestic production of glyphosate and key chemical inputs used in its manufacture, describing glyphosate-based herbicides as essential to American agricultural productivity and food security. On its face, the order is framed as a supply-chain stabilisation measure. Yet its timing — against the backdrop of ongoing mass tort litigation — ensures that it will be read by critics as something more consequential than an industrial policy adjustment.
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, sits at the centre of one of the most significant product-liability battles of the past decade. Since Monsanto was acquired by Bayer in 2018, juries in several high-profile cases have found that exposure to glyphosate-based products was a substantial contributing factor in plaintiffs' non-Hodgkin lymphoma and that adequate warnings were not provided. The 2018 Dewayne Johnson verdict initially reached $289 million before being reduced on appeal. Subsequent cases, including those of Edwin Hardeman and the Pilliod couple, produced similarly dramatic jury awards that were later lowered but nevertheless upheld liability findings. Bayer has paid or agreed to pay roughly $10 billion in settlements and continues to face thousands of pending claims.
These verdicts are legally significant, but they do not by themselves resolve the scientific debate. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans," a hazard-based determination that asks whether a substance can cause cancer under some conditions. In contrast, regulatory bodies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the European Food Safety Authority, and the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority have concluded that glyphosate is unlikely to pose a cancer risk when used according to label directions. The divergence reflects a methodological distinction between hazard identification and real-world exposure risk assessment — a distinction that tends to disappear in political discourse.
The controversy surrounding the executive order centres on its liability provisions. Under the Defense Production Act, companies complying with federal production directives often receive certain legal protections related to that compliance. The precise scope of those protections depends on statutory language and judicial interpretation. They may relate narrowly to contractual or supply obligations, or they may have broader implications if courts interpret them expansively. It is therefore more accurate to say that the order may provide compliance-related legal protections than to assert blanket immunity from all pending or future tort claims. Nevertheless, the optics are inescapable: expanding production of a product that remains the subject of active litigation inevitably raises questions about the relationship between industrial policy and unresolved liability disputes.
The political tension is heightened by the role of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has previously criticised glyphosate and supported plaintiffs in earlier litigation. As a member of the current administration, he now operates within a policy framework that emphasises supply stability and national security considerations. Supporters argue that domestic agricultural resilience requires reliable access to widely used herbicides, particularly amid geopolitical and trade uncertainties. Critics counter that reinforcing glyphosate production while litigation continues sends a contradictory message to those concerned about environmental and chronic disease risks.
At a structural level, modern industrial agriculture relies heavily on glyphosate for no-till farming, erosion control, and yield optimisation. Abrupt removal would have measurable effects on production systems and potentially on food prices. Policymakers therefore confront a familiar trade-off between precautionary health concerns and economic or supply-chain stability. Governments, particularly in times of perceived strategic vulnerability, tend to prioritise continuity of production. Whether that priority reflects prudence, regulatory capture, or simply political realism is a matter of interpretation.
What is clear is that the executive order intersects two parallel systems of judgment. The scientific-regulatory system assesses population-level exposure risk through statistical modelling and toxicological review. The civil litigation system evaluates individual cases under a lower evidentiary threshold and with juries weighing corporate conduct alongside medical testimony. These systems can and often do produce divergent conclusions without either being fraudulent or irrational.
For that reason, the debate over glyphosate cannot be reduced to a binary of proven carcinogen versus vindicated chemistry, nor to a simplistic narrative of patriotic supply protection versus corporate favouritism. The more substantive question is whether federal industrial policy should intersect so directly with ongoing mass tort litigation and how courts will interpret the legal protections attached to compliance with such orders. That is a legitimate political and legal issue, and it warrants scrutiny grounded in precision rather than rhetorical absolutism.
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