And how many jobs at beet processing plants, truck drivers, etc would be lost to cheap imported sugar? What will happen to the beet contracts when the processors go out of business? There aren’t easy escape hatches written into these for the farmers who produce the beets. They could well be caught with beets in the ground when the processor goes belly-up. This could mean a crop year denied to the farmer to plant a replacement crop.
Add to that that the price of milk and beef would go up as cattle producers lose a cheap source of cattle feed when beet waste goes away.
Economists love these simplistic ideas of what happens when we knock down all tariffs and engage in “free trade.”
As the economy has shown since about 2002, their theories are not being borne out by the data. There is no huge economic benefit from “free trade.” Wage growth stagnated from 2003 onwards, and now we’re actually going down in wage growth. The only unequivocal outcome of the “free trade” movement has been that we have large and growing trade deficits that are resulting in the US economy no longer being able to generate jobs - except for people like, oh say, economists, who are employed by sticking their snouts into the taxpayer’s pockets - in this case, the taxpayers of Michigan.
The first thing conservatives should do when reading the twaddle coming out of any economist’s brain is to see from where do they generate their living. If they’re working for a think tank or a university, then find out if they have tenure.
If they have tenure, then we can safely disregard anything they have to say on the subject of “free markets” because they’re protected from anything remotely resembling a “free market.” It is nearly impossible to fire them for non-performance. This yahoo claims to be a “professor,” which I take to mean “full professor” which means he most likely has tenure.
I guess we should put a tariff on all imports???
Some undoubtedly -- probably several thousand. But think about almost $4 billion added to Americans' budgets. That's a lot of money.
We often talk about the "tax" on Americans by increased oil prices caused by problems in the Middle East. Well, the sugar tax is no less burdensome and it's just as easily reduced.
The government has no place in favoring one industry over another. The result is that some Americans are penalized to give an advantage to the others. That's a government policy that's pretty hard to defend. It's nothing but economic affirmative action.