Posted on 12/30/2021 5:43:39 AM PST by Kaslin
I could understand if subsidies help family farmers to stay in business, but more and more these are just gifts to Big Ag.
Sugar dumping? Sounds like a sticky situation.
Sugar is one of the most distorted markets in the US. In spite of what this article states, the US is not competitive. Cane is a million times more efficient to grow, harvest and process as compared to beet sugar, and is actually better in food processing because it doesn’t bubble up like beet does. Other than some places in Florida, Louisiana and Hawaii we just do not have the climate to grow cane. Last time I looked there was an import tariff on imports equal to the spot world price effectively doubling the price US consumers pay vs the rest of the world. All of this to protect a handful of beet farmers and big ag processors and to provide an obscene profit margin to the few cane producers we do have. Sugar is relatively cheap, but we pay twice what we should because of shenanigans, corruption and government theft at the end of a gun.
I know of what I speak. I was involved in the world trade for quite a while dealing in thousands to millions of metric ton quantities. Physicals, not just paper.
Cheap everywhere but here and politicians blame everyone but themselves. They are mostly crooks and liars.
Big Ag has the politicians by the nads.
The USA developed a huge fructose industry for exactly this reason. Of course, there has been a push back, and Americans are now using less of it - and I believe less sugar as well. There's only so much even obese Americans can eat.
Why not simply have a simple duty of 50% on imported cane sugar, instead of the complicated quota system that exists now?
” an enforceable reciprocal multi-national agreement”
and who enforces that?
WTO? UN? . .. .
let the market speak. Competitive advantage is a real thing.
Count the real US jobs in production - price it into the deal - time frame for an end.
We don’t really need all that sugar anyway-
It kills way more people that Fentanyl, and has been for many, many years.
I know of what I speak. I was involved in the world trade for quite a while dealing in thousands to millions of metric ton quantities. Physicals, not just paper.
You just saved me a lot of typing, thanks. The biggest beneficiary of this looting of the American people is Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) because the tariffs (combined with massive big-ag subsidies for sugar) create the market for corn syrup as a substitute for sugar. This makes Americans' sweets more expensive, taste worse and they are more harmful for health than actual sugar.
The sad news is that this distortion is 100% bipartisan. Everyone in government is on the payroll of ADM and no one will speak up against it.
The even sadder news is that news sources that might be the only people speaking up against this looting of our pockets are themselves on the take, many of them.
Is Townhall on the take? Did they get paid for this advertisement? I don't know, but it is completely impossible in my opinion for someone who knows so much about international sugar policy to write a whole long article on this topic without once mentioning all the distortions in the U.S. market, unless that person is just going out of his way to be a shill for ADM and American big-ag.
And why would someone from a scrappy small conservative website decide to stand up against the American people and shill for big-ag?
I've seen other worrying content in Townhall like this before and now I'm seeing a trend.
High Fructose Corn Syrup is the killer.
I recall the ads touting C&H sugar as “pure cane sugar from Hawaii,” but no more. Sugar is no longer grown in Hawaii.
Used to be Gonads, but squeezed the ‘go’ right out of them.
HFCS is not your friend. Soon will discover that it causes Inflammatory Bowel Disease, if not a precursor to colo-rectal cancer.
Why 1 cent of duty? Unlike steel, aluminum and energy there is no national security implications to letting comparative advantage work.
I assume no one in the industry, and no relevant state or Federal politicians would ever agree to no “protection” for farmers and sugar industry whatsoever. It hasn’t happened in half a century or longer.
Only suggesting that perhaps a straight-up duty would make a lot more sense, be less corrupt and more clear for everyone involved than present quota system
To harvest sugarcane, first they burn the field
Horrible air and water pollution and the EPA looks away.
These days, family farms either "go big" or go out of business. My home parish (county) of Pointe Coupee in South Louisiana grows a LOT of sugar, and it takes big investment to do. Small farms are just not economically viable.
Well eventually we’re going to reap the whirlwind for it.
I suppose the corn lobby (producing high fructose corn sugar) would love to see the sugar industry collapse.
The corn lobby has personal interest in seeing the small US cane producers and crappy beet producers succeed. It gives them cover. HFCS is inferior in every way to cane sugar in processing. Invert corn sugars have some uses, but as a sweetener and in processing corn syrup sucks compared to either and for many uses the beet sugar is vastly inferior too.
With more than 50 million MT of production of cane sugar, Brazil leads global production. They have the climate for it. We don’t. Beets are inefficient and yield an inferior end product. HFCS is expensive to produce. Sucks in industrial food processing. Fructose has major blood sugar impacts beyond that of sucrose.
The sugar industry will not collapse. It should not be an industry in the US is all. Comparative advantage. Basic economics. If the US sugar industry collapsed, it would not have national security implications. Same for the massive HFCS plants. Same for ethanol production. All are inefficient resource allocation.
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