India Took the Last Three Months of Your Toluidine

Twelve American facilities told EPA they had o-toluidine on site in 2024.

Two of them said they made it. Both of those two, Rubicon at Geismar and BASF at Geismar, also ticked the byproduct box on the same form.

None of the twelve ticked the box for sale or distribution.

"If nobody here sells the molecule, who does, and are they still shipping it?"

The answer lives on one tariff line. HS 2921.43, toluidines and their derivatives, carried 15,153 tonnes into the United States last year, against 28,910 in 2019.

Through July this year it has carried 6,143, down 46.8 percent on the same seven months of 2025.

And in May the origin mix flipped (chart below).

The German Line Is the One That Moved

Germany has been roughly three quarters of this heading for most of a decade, and it is where almost all of the missing tonnage went missing. January through July, against the same months of 2025:

• Germany, 3,817.4 t, down from 8,840.9. Minus 56.8 percent, and its share of the heading falls from 76.6 to 62.1 percent.
• India, 1,440.6 t, up from 1,161.1. Plus 24.1 percent, the only origin on the line that grew.
• Italy, 826.7 t, down from 1,478.6. Minus 44.1 percent, and the most expensive book of the three at $5.66/kg.
• Everybody else, 58.6 t between them, against 61.9. China is 13.7 of it.

Value fell faster than volume. The whole heading landed at $2.68/kg this year against $2.99 last, and German material specifically went from $2.28/kg to $1.75, down 23.2 percent.

Mix moves a unit value around inside a basket line, so read that as direction rather than as a price.

The direction is unambiguous. Tonnes down 46.8 percent, dollars per kilo down 10.3 percent, which is the shape of American buyers taking less rather than of anybody running short.