{"id":870,"date":"2016-10-31T15:35:34","date_gmt":"2016-10-31T15:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freemarketsugar.com\/?p=870"},"modified":"2016-10-31T15:35:34","modified_gmt":"2016-10-31T15:35:34","slug":"big-candy-resurrects-annual-halloween-scarefest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freemarketsugar.com\/big-candy-resurrects-annual-halloween-scarefest\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Candy Resurrects Annual Halloween Scarefest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Chuck Muth)<\/strong><\/em> –\u00a0Swiss watches have nothing on sugar program critics when it comes to timing and reliability.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Halloween. And like clockwork, Big Candy\u2019s minions are crawling out of their chocolate-covered graves to spook everyone with spine-tingling tales of Franken-tariffs and Quota Ghosts.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs consumers watch trick-or-treaters go by, they likely miss the true terror on All Hallows\u2019 Eve,\u201d Jonathan Sargent intones darkly in an op-ed published last week in the Daily Caller<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so slight you may not have noticed, but this year those Reese\u2019s Pieces and candy corn are just a bit more expensive thanks to sugar subsidies and crony greed.\u00a0 In fact for years the price of candy in the U.S. has steadily increased.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

But just like Halloween goblins, there\u2019s more scare than there in Mr. Sargent\u2019s horror story.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s true the cost of \u201ccandy\u201d has steadily increased for years, it ain\u2019t because of sugar.\u00a0 In fact, the cost of sugar today is right around where it was when kids were trick-or-treating at Ronald Reagan\u2019s White House 30 years ago.<\/p>\n

Sugar isn\u2019t Big Candy\u2019s boogie-man.\u00a0 It\u2019s actually Big Candy\u2019s straw man.\u00a0 Big Candy, as always, is trying to scare Congress into believing the U.S. sugar program \u2013 rather than skyrocketing labor costs, taxes, government regulation, insurance and good, old-fashioned profit-taking \u2013 are causing the spike in the cost of candy corn.<\/p>\n

Mr. Sargent also writes that \u201cthe U.S. Sugar Program cost taxpayers nearly $300 million in 2013\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t think it\u2019s a coincidence that he picked 2013.\u00a0 Because that\u2019s the ONLY year in at least the last ten in which the sugar program cost taxpayers so much as a dime.<\/p>\n

HOWEVER, that was only because Mexico violated U.S. trade law in 2013 and dumped cheap, government-subsidized sugar into the U.S. market.\u00a0 As a result, the USDA had to take corrective action to keep the entire North American sweetener market from imploding.<\/p>\n

Those trade violations have been addressed.\u00a0 And now the Congressional Budget Office and USDA project the U.S. sugar program will remain at ZERO cost for taxpayers over the life of the farm bill.<\/p>\n

Big Candy is again trying to trick Congress into ending a program that doesn\u2019t cost taxpayers a dime \u2013 2013 excepted \u2013 and isn\u2019t the cause of skyrocketing candy prices.\u00a0 It\u2019d be a real treat if they and their allies would stop trying to scare everybody.<\/p>\n

Quick, set your watch!\u00a0 Only 53 days \u2018til the \u201cBig Sugar is Driving Up the Cost of Holiday Candy Canes\u201d op-eds and press releases hit your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Chuck Muth) –\u00a0Swiss watches have nothing on sugar program critics when it comes to timing and reliability. It\u2019s Halloween. And like clockwork, Big Candy\u2019s minions are crawling out of their chocolate-covered graves to spook everyone with spine-tingling tales of Franken-tariffs and Quota Ghosts. \u201cAs consumers watch trick-or-treaters go by, they likely miss the true terror […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":871,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freemarketsugar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freemarketsugar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freemarketsugar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freemarketsugar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freemarketsugar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=870"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/freemarketsugar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":872,"href":"https:\/\/freemarketsugar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions\/872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freemarketsugar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freemarketsugar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freemarketsugar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freemarketsugar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}