[Wuli]

“Neither are rare earth metals in reality. Overzealous environmental regulations along with the disparity in labor costs once again makes this an apt comparison.”

Sorry, more ignorance from you with more use of some problems to explain away others you disagree are really problems or problems you want to ignore.

While there are SOME “rare earth metals” where environmental regulations, in the U.S. are a problem, and not known supply and reserves, there are OTHERS where the supply and reserves, and where in the world they are known to exist, at strategic quantities, IS AN ISSUE, IS THE ISSUE, that no amount of improvement in our domestic regulations or labor costs can fix.

Sugar is not in the same situation and cannot be.

[Pox]

at strategic quantities

Actually, it would be better described as sufficient concentrations that are economically extracted, but that really isn't the issue. Perhaps I am making a bad comparison by lumping together all REM's, but that does not dismiss the overall issue of our obtaining our own reserves versus the cost of obtaining them in countries that are not saddled with onerous regulations and incomparable labor costs. If I were to cherry pick a certain REM to illustrate my point, it would make no difference as the basic economics behind said REM are still forcing us to obtain our supplies outside of this country due to the bottom line.

Now that supply is drying up of certain REM's due to the fact that we do not mine our reserves since it is cheaper to obtain them from China or elsewhere, it is beginning to become economically viable, or actually a necessity due to the situation we've been presented with which is a demand with little to no supply.

Eventually, we could again come back full circle in the case of Sugar as I outlined previously, but what is the point of allowing such upheaval in our own labor situation in the first place for such an important commodity? I don't have an easy answer to that question, and perhaps we need to be pushed down that road once again to see the "errors of our ways", but perhaps it's much more sane to actually level the playing field through a tariff to avoid a repeat of earlier mistakes that have been made? Again, I don't profess to have all of the answers, but this case seems pretty clear cut to me that the howling from Hershey is pure BS, and the many articles I've read about their desire to cast off their union labor costs are much more realistic than the desire to avoid "world prices" of sugar. In fact, it only seems to me they would love to have the tariff dropped so they can continue to shovel more of their profits at their unions, and that, once again, is a pattern we have seen over and over again for 50+ years.