(Seton Motley) – Hershey’s – the candy man — is a BIG business. Its May 2014 market cap was $23.26 billion. And Hershey’s is very generous with government. Through the second quarter of last year, it had spent $8,332,000 on lobbying and $845,534 on candidates and elected officials. Those are sums no Mom & Pop Candy Shoppe can come close […]…
Leslie Joseph of the Wall Street Journal reported this week that “Raw-sugar futures are up about 10% this year, even as most commodities continue to decline.” Joseph explains that “Sugar’s gains come amid dry weather in No. 1 producer Brazil, which is expected to result in the smallest global surplus of the sweetener in five […]…
In a recent op-ed published by Reason.com, Greg Beato beats the same drums anti-sugar natives here in the U.S. have been beating for decades. Abiding by the Rule of Three, let’s “reality check” a trio of his main points… 1.) Beato maintains that “consumers are getting screwed” by the U.S. sugar program that prevents artificially […]…
How do you boost the cost of sugar in India without boosting the cost of sugar in India? Simple. If you’re the Indian government you jack up the cost of government-mandated ethanol, and sugar prices will zoom to the moon on their own. In what the Economic Times characterized as a “bonanza for sugar mills,” […]…
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and the sugar’s always sweeter on the other side of the globe. At least according to critics of the U.S. sugar program. A recent story in the Wall Street Journal (“US Sugar Soars Above World Prices,” 12/7/14) notes that the price of a […]…
College football’s Sugar Bowl, played in the New Orleans Superdome, is the second oldest bowl game in the country. It – along with the Orange, Peach and Cotton Bowls – reminds us of just how important agriculture is and always has been to the U.S. economy, especially in the south. Indeed, a recent story by […]…
(By John R. Smith) – Let’s take an objective look at U.S. sugar policy. Based on Economics 101, supply should equal demand, to keep prices stable. America’s sugar policy, mandated by Congress, is designed to run at zero cost to taxpayers — not a dime. Sugar farmers do not receive subsidy checks. The Department of Agriculture […]…
Like a full moon, it seems that every month a spokesperson for Big Candy trots out a story, article, white paper or op-ed bemoaning the cost of home-grown, made-in-the-USA sugar as though it were a bigger threat to the American way of life than Freddie Krueger. Halloween, of course, is the Super Bowl of anti-sugar […]…
In a recent op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal, lobbyist Burleigh C.W. Leonard criticized a recent agreement that stops Mexico from unfairly dumping cheap, heavily-subsidized sugar in the U.S. at below market prices. Leonard contends that the U.S. is as guilty as Mexico because we have in place a program that protects our domestic […]…
In a recent column, Darren Bakst and Bryan Riley of the Heritage Foundation pooh-pooh a resolution by Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Florida) which calls for zeroing out the U.S. sugar program in simultaneous return for other nations zeroing out their sugar subsidy programs. The authors refer to Yoho’s “zero-for-zero” proposal as a “flawed” “scheme” that has […]…