|
The United States and Mexico have gone sour over sugar. The
Mexicans claim that NAFTA allows them to supply about 6 percent of
the U.S. market. The United States says it's closer to 1 percent.
The American Sugar Cane League warns that "a teaspoon more of
sugar in this country would decimate the United States
industry."
The U.S. industry could use some competition. U.S. quotas
guarantee it 85 percent of the market. At the moment, the U.S.
commodity price for sugar is 70 percent above the world price, and
in the past has been three times as high.
The United States should be buying sugar from the Philippines,
Brazil and Cuba. Instead, Americans have chosen to grow it here.
It's a political decision, not an economic one. This is why we grow
sugar beets. It is why we sweeten Pepsi and Coke with corn syrup.
This shakedown of the American consumer is fueled by political
donations from such companies as U.S. Sugar Refining and Archer
Daniels Midland. It is also helped because the No. 1 corn state,
Iowa, holds the first presidential caucuses. And Florida, with 25
electoral votes, is the No. 1 producer of cane.
United States negotiators in Mexico are representing the narrow
interests of a protected industry, not the legitimate interests of
American consumers.
|