Chemical Lobby Claims Major Victory After Trump Administration Guts MAHA Pesticide Strategy
The pesticide industry helped persuade the Trump administration to scrap warnings about pesticides from its Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) strategy. Its leading trade association now celebrates that achievement as its biggest victory of 2025.
The contradiction could hardly be more glaring. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent decades fighting harmful chemicals and corporate influence, both in court and through public advocacy. Confronting those very threats was supposed to be central to the administration’s MAHA initiative.
Yet the White House, as the pesticide lobby proudly acknowledges, “opened its doors” to industry representatives. The outcome was predictable, though hardly consistent with the administration’s earlier promises.
A Victory Worth Celebrating
According to a November 1 investigation by Stacy Malkan of the nonprofit investigative news organization U.S. Right to Know (USRTK), CropLife America considers its campaign to influence the MAHA Commission its “most significant accomplishment” of 2025.
The powerful trade association represents major pesticide manufacturers, including Bayer, BASF, Corteva, FMC, and Syngenta. Its members have substantial financial interests in federal decisions governing pesticide safety and agricultural policy.
In its 2025 Impact Report, former chairman Paul Rea, a longtime BASF executive, declared:
There is no better example than how CropLife America, with the support of its members and partners, raised its voice to highlight the potential impacts of the MAHA commission findings.
The association hailed the final MAHA strategy’s lack of new pesticide restrictions as “a win for farmers and the crop protection industry.”
After months of industry lobbying, the administration had removed warnings about specific pesticides from its final strategy and shifted its emphasis toward the existing federal regulatory framework.
For manufacturers facing growing scrutiny over their products’ potential health effects, that was a welcome outcome.
For the administration, it was a striking reversal.
From Promises to Concessions
As Malkan recounts, in November 2024, President-elect Donald Trump pledged to protect Americans from “harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides” and other health threats.
Trump appointed Kennedy, a longtime critic of chemical pollution and corporate influence, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Kennedy had also successfully represented plaintiffs suing Monsanto over Roundup, including people who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma and alleged that glyphosate exposure caused their cancer.
In February 2025, Trump established the MAHA Commission under Kennedy’s leadership to investigate America’s chronic disease epidemic, particularly among children.
The commission’s initial assessment, released in May, warned about corporate influence over science and public policy. It also highlighted potential health risks associated with glyphosate and atrazine, two widely used herbicides.
Citing scientific research, the report linked glyphosate exposure to “reproductive and developmental disorders as well as cancers, liver inflammation and metabolic disturbances.” It also warned that atrazine exposure could cause “endocrine disruption and birth defects.”
The pesticide industry mobilized to challenge those findings. Writes Malkan:
By summer, dozens of food and pesticide industry groups were meeting with Trump administration officials about the [MAHA] report.
By September, the administration had changed course.
The MAHA Commission’s final strategy, published on September 9, dropped its earlier warnings about pesticides and proposed no new restrictions on their use.
Instead, it emphasized public confidence in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) existing pesticide review process, adopting language promoted by CropLife.
Kennedy nevertheless declared that the administration was ending the “corporate capture of public health” and placing “gold-standard science” rather than special interests at the center of its decisions.
The White House Opens Its Doors
CropLife’s 2025 Impact Report describes its objective plainly:
Minimize the impact of non-science-based actions and rhetoric from the MAHA Commission.
The association mobilized farmers to send more than 5,200 personalized letters to administration officials. It also organized advertising campaigns and secured support from more than 75 members of Congress.
The lawmakers urged Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to resist what CropLife called “misguided policies promoted by activist groups under the guise of health solutions.”
CropLife also launched its “Farmer Voices Matter” campaign to defend pesticide use and warn against restrictions that could increase agricultural costs.
The White House proved receptive. As CropLife President Alexandra Dunn acknowledged:
The White House was very responsive. They opened their doors.
Dunn was no stranger to Washington. She headed the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention during Trump’s first administration, overseeing pesticide regulation from 2019 to 2021.
She joined CropLife in 2024 and received more than $790,000 in compensation that year, according to Malkan.
Her career illustrates Washington’s familiar revolving door between federal regulators and the industries they oversee.
Kennedy had spent years condemning precisely such relationships. In a 2023 essay, he warned:
A key feature of the state-corporate merger is the capture of federal agencies by industries they are supposed to regulate. This is why our nation’s most serious problems are never solved, but only seem to get worse.
Malkan documents further connections.
According to her report, at least 29 high-ranking Trump administration officials had worked within Bayer’s lobbying or legal network.
Documents obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity identify former Corteva lobbyist Turner Bridgforth, then a senior EPA advisor, as CropLife’s contact for arranging discussions about the MAHA strategy.
The documents also show that Bayer contacted senior EPA officials about its Supreme Court litigation over Roundup cancer warnings.
In a regularly updated investigation, USRTK further documents Bayer’s extensive connections to the administration, tracing the company’s network of former lobbyists, lawyers, and political insiders now holding positions of federal power.
MAHA Supporters React
The investigation quotes sharp criticism from activists who had expected Kennedy to challenge pesticide manufacturers.
MAHA advocate Kelly Ryerson responded to CropLife’s celebration:
Well, that is disgusting. … Shame on Croplife and the administration for prioritizing chemical company profits over American children.
Vani Hari, founder of the Food Babe Army, reached a similar conclusion:
The pesticide industry won.
Hari described her experience observing the administration’s policymaking process:
I went in not understanding exactly how corrupt and sophisticated it is behind the scenes in terms of preventing any kind of progress.
Angela Huffman, president of Farm Action, challenged the industry’s claim that defending pesticide manufacturers necessarily protects farmers:
Protecting pesticide sales is not the same as protecting farmers.
CropLife disputed the criticism.
Spokeswoman Annemarie Pender told USRTK that the association shares MAHA’s goal of “expanding access to affordable, nutritious foods” and supports policies grounded in scientific evidence.
Federal Protection
The retreat on pesticide warnings was followed by further federal support for the industry.
In February 2026, Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to prioritize domestic production of glyphosate-based herbicides, elevating their supply to a national-defense priority.
His Justice Department also supported Monsanto’s position in litigation over Roundup cancer warnings. In June, the Supreme Court ruled in the company’s favor, restricting certain state-law failure-to-warn claims.
The developments offer another stark reminder of the dangers of concentrating healthcare and regulatory power in Washington. The enormous federal healthcare apparatus is plainly unconstitutional. Returning powers not delegated to the federal government to the states and local communities would restore greater accountability to those who must live with the consequences of federal policies.
