Free Market Sugar

Tag: U.S. Sugar Program

  • Big Candy Launches “Surge” Against Rubio, U.S. Sugar Program

    Big Candy Launches “Surge” Against Rubio, U.S. Sugar Program

    Candies and chocolates are the best end products of sugar. (Image Courtesy: Pixabay)
    Candies and chocolates are the best end products of sugar. (Image Courtesy: Pixabay)

    (Chuck Muth) – Candy-makers and confectioners – intent on importing artificially cheap, foreign subsidized sugar – have recently ratcheted up PR efforts to kill the U.S. sugar program, including shooting at the presidential campaign of Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio.

    • “Marco Rubio owes his political existence to Big Sugar,” declares Alan Farago in the Huffington Post.
    • “Marco Rubio needs to get past his sugar problem,” opines Timothy Carney in the Washington Examiner.
    • “Marco Rubio’s Billion-Dollar Sugar Addiction,” blares National Review Online.
    • “Rubio and Big Sugar,” the Wall Street Journal editorialized.
    • “Rubio’s position aligns with that of the sugar industry,” wrote Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post.
    • “Marco Rubio’s continued defense of the economically indefensible US sugar program,” intoned Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute.
    • “Rubio has consistently voted for and defended the federal sugar program,” wrote Steve Benen of MSNBC.
    • Mary Clare Jalonick of U.S. News and World Report reports that Rubio “has consistently voted to maintain the sugar program.”
    • Blogger Greg Sargent wrote that “Rubio is solely interested in keeping the sugar subsidy program because it keeps people employed in his state.”

    You’d almost think this “surge” of attacks was being coordinated by some special interest!

    The amazing thing about the criticism, however, is the claim that it’s the cost of sugar that’s costing American consumers more money when, in fact, the cost of sugar today is about where it was some 30 years ago while the cost of a candy bar has skyrocketed.

    Meaning the burden taxpayers are shouldering for Hershey bars is coming from somewhere other than sugar.

    Indeed, the WSJ editorial claimed that “The U.S. candy industry has been hollowed out as companies have fled to places like Guatemala and Thailand where they can remain competitive by buying sugar at world-market prices.”

    Oh, puh-lease.

    Does anyone really believe candy-makers are relocating to third-world countries because of a 10-cent difference in the global cost of sugar rather than the huge gulf in labor costs, taxation, benefit mandates and government regulations?

    Rubio’s position on the U.S. sugar program is fair, reasonable and defensible. “I’m ready to get rid of the loan program for sugar as long as the countries that export sugar into the U.S. get rid of theirs as well,” he declared at a Heritage Foundation forum this summer.

    Tit-for-tat.  Zero-for-zero.  You drop yours, we’ll drop ours.

    Makes perfect sense, despite the impressive surge of outrage coming from Big Candy’s PR machine.

     

    Chuck Muth is president of Citizen Outreach and the publisher of www.NevadaNewsandViews.com.  He personally blogs at www.MuthsTruths.com.

  • What Wayne Gretzky can teach opponents of the U.S. Sugar Program

    What Wayne Gretzky can teach opponents of the U.S. Sugar Program

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    (Chuck Muth, Citizen Outreach) – If you’re part of the establishment wing of the GOP you’re in near-panic mode these days as anointed presidential candidate Jeb Bush’s campaign continues in its political death spiral. Which may explain recent attacks against upstart Sen. Marco Rubio on an otherwise obscure issue that really only benefits one special interest…

    Big Candy.

    In a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, the nation’s leading financial newspaper raised a stink about the U.S. sugar program; an issue that even CNBC couldn’t find a way to inject in the last presidential debate.  And according to the editorial, Bush has said “he favors phasing it out” while Rubio, “the fresh-faced champion of limited-government conservatism,” doesn’t.

    But like the recent “fabricated” story about fellow GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson and his West Point “scholarship,” that’s not exactly true.

    Indeed, in slamming Rubio for his support for this important program to U.S. sugar farmers, the Journal acknowledges that Rubio, too, favors phasing out the program.  Just not unilaterally – as, apparently, Bush is now willing to accept.  Rather, only when foreign governments simultaneously phase out their own direct government subsidies for their own sugar industries.

    The subtle difference here is that the Journal hath decreed that such a day will “never” come.  But there’s simply no objective reason to accept such pessimism.  As the saying goes, never say never.  And as another saying goes, those who say it can’t be done should get out of the way of those who are already doing it.

    Indeed, as we learned in a recent House congressional hearing, after Mexico was caught “dumping” heavily-subsidized sugar into the United States – collapsing our domestic market and costing taxpayers money under the program for the first time since NAFTA’s passage – an agreement has since been reached to assure not only free trade in sugar between the two nations, but fair trade as well.

    This bears repeating, especially because it directly contradicts an assertion by the Journal in its editorial: It’s not that the price of U.S. sugar is artificially high; it’s that the price of Mexico’s sugar is artificially low.

    Wayne Gretzky
    Wayne Gretzky

    The Mexico example lights the way for U.S. negotiators to pursue and strike similar win-win deals with other foreign sugar producers, especially Brazil, India, and Thailand.  “We’ll drop our sugar program if/when you drop yours.”  Zero subsidies/protections for zero subsidies/protections – exactly as Rep. Ted Yoho, Florida Republican, has proposed in a House resolution.

    As the great Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”  So it’s not that zero-for-zero can “never” happen.  It’s that Congress needs to take a shot at it.

     

    Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach and the publisher of www.NevadaNewsandViews.com.  He personally blogs at www.MuthsTruths.com.

  • Halloween is over, but Sugar Program Scare Tactics continue

    Sugar skulls are the most common recipe in Mexico during Halloween.
    Sugar skulls are the most common recipe in Mexico during Halloween.

    Chuck Muth(Chuck Muth, Citizen Outreach) – Well, another Halloween has come and gone, but not before opponents of the U.S. sugar program once again tried to scare the bejeepers out of members of Congress with frightening tales of consumers being fleeced over the cost of sweets dropped into the bags of costumed trick-or-treaters knocking on the door.

    But like most spooky stories, such tales are exaggerated for effect, not grounded in reality.

    To hear propagandists for the candy industry tell it, consumers paid through the nose for the chocolate bars and lollipops they handed out at the door Saturday night thanks to the U.S. sugar program.  And indeed, the cost of those goodies is much higher today than it was thirty years ago.

    But now let’s snap out of the nightmare and wake up to reality.

    The cost of the sugar that went into the candy that went into those trick-or-treat bags has remained virtually unchanged over the last three decades, while the cost of the treats themselves have, indeed, skyrocketed.  That’s a fact, not a tale from the crypt.

    So if the cost of sugar in the U.S. has remained virtually unchanged over all these years, why are consumers paying so much more today for Milky Ways, Snickers, M&M’s and Hershey bars?

    Because the cost of labor to manufacture those sweets has gone up.  Because the cost of employee benefits has gone up.  Because taxes have gone up.  Because the cost of compliance with government regulations has gone up.  Because the cost of other ingredients have gone up.

    Because the amount of profit-taking by candy companies has gone up.

    The truth behind the reasons for retaining the minimal trade restrictions associated with the U.S. sugar program is that foreign governments continue to distort the world sugar market with direct government subsidies that force American farmers to play against a stacked deck.

    Take Mexico, for example.  Not only does our NAFTA partner heavily subsidize its sugar industry, it OWNS part of it.  And the only reason the U.S. sugar program cost U.S. taxpayers any money at all in 2013 was because Mexico was dumping artificially cheap sugar on the U.S. market.

    Indeed, after the U.S. government investigated Mexico, it found proof that our “friends” had, indeed, been guilty of violating trade laws and corrective action has been taken.

    That’s a good thing.  But the problem is that Mexico is but one guilty party.  Plenty of other foreign governments continue to distort the market.

    And until all governments agree to simultaneous subsidy disarmament, U.S. farmers will continue to need minimal protection from such international spooks and goblins.

     

    Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach and the publisher of www.NevadaNewsandViews.com.  He personally blogs at www.MuthsTruths.com.