Posted on 08/20/2015 7:21:46 PM PDT by markomalley
The manufacturer of Oreo cookies recently announced plans to move production of Oreos from Chicago to Mexico, resulting in a loss of 600 U.S. jobs.
This should be a wake-up call to defenders of the U.S. sugar program and other job-destroying trade barriers.
The leading ingredient in Oreos is sugar, and U.S. trade barriers currently require Americans to pay twice the average world prices for sugar.
Sugar-using industries now have a big incentive to relocate from the United States to countries where access to their primary ingredient is not restricted.
If the government wants people making Oreo cookies and similar products to keep their jobs, a logical starting point would be to eliminate the U.S. sugar program, including barriers to imported sugar.
This obvious connection between the lost jobs and sugar quotas was missed by many observers. According to one online commenter: “This is why tariff[s] on products coming to U.S must be raised.”
That’s backwards. When protectionist policies like the U.S. sugar program lead to offshoring, the response shouldn’t be to pass new laws to discourage such offshoring or to raise tariffs even higher. The response should be to eliminate government policies that encourage offshoring in the first place.
The loss of Oreo cookie jobs should reinforce a lesson on the job-destroying aspect of protectionist trade policies.
According to a 2006 report from the government’s International Trade Administration: “Chicago, one of the largest U.S. cities for confectionery manufacturing, has lost nearly one-third of its SCP manufacturing jobs over the last 13 years. These losses are attributed, in part, to high U.S. sugar prices.”
That lesson appears to be lost on unions that are supposed to represent the workers losing their jobs in Chicago.
For example, The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union consistently has opposed free trade agreements with sugar-producing countries like Australia, Brazil, and Mexico—the kind of trade deals that just might protect their members’ jobs.
So that’s how the cookie crumbles.
Tariffs should be consistently applied. To tariff sugar and not all the products that contain sugar creates an incentive to off-shore.
Sugar has dramatically fallen in price in the past year or so.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with sugar -- it's been a way of life in America for centuries -- especially in the South (sweet tea anyone?). Some of the leftists are pushing the lie that sugar is addictive, like a drug. These are same group of Nazis who believe in the heresy of globull warming. I've enjoyed sugar all my life and am healthy and in my mid-70s!
I blame the dirt bags in congress who subsidize corn and the other dirtbags in congress who demonize High Fructose Corn Sugar.
End the damned corn Subsidies dammit already.
Also maybe by not subsidizing the damned corn sugar industry the sugar BEET farmers would be able to raise sugar beets and we could make all the damned DOMESTIC SUGAR we need instead of relying on 3rd world craphole Sugar cane sugar from commie regimes in south and central America.
The U.S. sugar industry has enjoyed trade protection since 1789 when Congress enacted the first tariff against foreign-produced sugar.
People are finally demanding that vile HFCS be taken out of foods. It's bizarre that US tariff policy forces the manufacture of more healthy foods to move out of the US.
Liberals demonize both corn syrup and anything with sugar in it. This is the same evil bunch that wants to limit the size of pop (or soda or coke -- region dependent for what it's called). I've lived well into my 70s with Karo syrup on my hotcakes nearly every morning and Slurpees from 7-11 on hot afternoons which occur 8-10 months every year in Texas. The tofu eating liberals are unhealthy little waifs. They'll not tell me what to consume!
Go sugar! Go corn syrup! Let freedom ring!
The US pays the highest sugar prices in the world thanks to Congress.
[ end the damned corn subsidies...
People are finally demanding that vile HFCS be taken out of foods. It’s bizarre that US tariff policy forces the manufacture of more healthy foods to move out of the US. ]
Yeah and current policy screws over domestic Sugar beet farmers in favor of BIG KORN.
Hawaii was once a major producer of sugar until the unions organized the cane workers and demanded such high wages that the industry went under
Soon enough Oreos will be arriving fresh from Cuba. Thanks markomalley.
I don’t eat pan cakes very often but when I do, I drown them in sorghum molasses. I’m still kicking after 70 years.
I ate it when growing up, my mother introduced me to it, she still eats sorghum molasses and she’s almost 95.
I did not know that. Why?? As far as I can figure out, beet sugar is not a problem. It's the HFCS that's the killer.
I know nothing about farming. What is the logic of favoring corn over over beets?
Or, we could simply stop protecting sugar farmers.
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