Lang, a partner in the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler, and Pickering in Washington, D.C., said, ``The key to progress in sugar negotiations is not old- fashioned negotiations about trade barriers; it is an entirely new and much more difficult negotiation about adjustment.''

Lang said, in addition to import barriers, ``Subsidies, state trading enterprises, and a myriad of other government interventions in production, financing, and other aspects of trade, distort and confound the legitimate market expectations of buyers and sellers just as much in import-sensitive industries like sugar as they do in export competitive industries like aircraft.''

Lang said that, ``in sugar, no attention has been devoted to this problem, even though government intervention distorts sugar trade in virtually every country where sugar is grown.''

Lang predicted that, ``if a true measure of distortions is applied fairly to all producers, U.S. sugar producers will be found to benefit from fewer and less distorting government interventions than most of their competitors. They are reinforced in this point of view by the fact that independent analysts tell us that the U.S. sugar industry is more competitive than most of its foreign competition and that the American consumer pays less for sugar in real terms than citizens of most other countries.''

Lang said, ``I suspect this is not just because the U.S. government intervenes less in sugar markets than other governments, but because it compels lower domestic prices; provides less protection against circumvention; practically forces competition with fructose products; provides no direct capital input subsidies; and in effect mandates a national deficit in production indefinitely into the future. It is hard to think of any other sugar-producing country that squeezes the profitability of its sugar industry so tenaciously. The remaining producers in the U.S. are, as a result, highly capitalized operations.''

Lang said, ``It is both unfair and contrary to the national economic interest of the United States to allow unrestricted importing to destroy an industry with that profile, absent agreement to address the distortions governments undertake in sugar.''

Lang advised that the myriad of sugar distortions should be addressed multilaterally, and not in bilateral or regional negotiations. ``The best opportunity to make sensible international reform in sugar trade is in the WTO,'' Lang said.

Lang concluded, ``Therefore, I think the U.S. strategy should be, like the EU (European Union), Brazil, and other major trading countries, to remove sugar from the regional negotiations and focus the effort on a global negotiation to remove government distortions of trade in sugar as a condition for dismantling barriers in all countries over reasonable amounts of time.''

The American Sugar Alliance is a national coalition of growers, processors and refiners of sugarbeets, sugarcane and corn for sweetener.

For more information about U.S. sugar policy visit American Sugar Alliance at http://www.sugaralliance.org .