This chapter charts Philippine presidential wrangling with the rice question, particularly via the National Food Authority. President Macapagal-Arroyo abused rice imports to generate the economic rents to keep her government of dubious legitimacy in power; these machinations exacerbated the 2008 regional rice crisis. Benigno Aquino III reined in his predecessor’s egregious corruption, yet allowed excessive smuggling in order to suppress prices as a means to boost his popularity. Genuine reform had to wait for Aquino’s successor. In late 2018, Rodrigo Duterte took the stunning step of liberalizing rice imports by revoking the NFA’s monopoly import permit, disrupting the steady march of post-Green Revolution institutionalization. This chapter analyzes the move’s short-term effects and how they have hamstrung Duterte’s successor, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The son of a prototypical production nationalist has balked at rolling back liberalization, despite campaign promises to do so, because of the lower rice prices the policy change has brought in an era of high inflation and mounting worry about the long-term effects on global food prices due to Russia’s war in Ukraine. The chapter ends with a discussion of the factors that enabled President Duterte’s reform of the country’s rice import trade in comparative historical perspective.