Sugar is widely considered to be the most distorted commodity market in the world, with market-disrupting subsidies commonplace in many countries around the world. These distortions have resulted in so-called world prices for sugar that for years have run at levels well below the world average cost of production.
American sugar growers are among the most efficient in the world. They could compete against foreign sugar growers on a level playing field, free of government intervention, but they cannot compete against foreign treasuries.
The Zero-for-Zero Approach
The U.S. sugar industry supports a “zero-for-zero” approach: if foreign countries were to give up their market-distorting subsidies, the United States would give up its existing sugar policy.
Absent foreign subsidies, a true free market could form, and the world market price would rise to reflect the actual cost of producing sugar. American sugar producers could compete – without its existing policy – on a genuine level playing field, where prices reflect the actual cost of producing sugar.
Representatives Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) and Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) have introduced H.Con.Res. 43, a bipartisan bill that seeks to zero out foreign subsidies. This legislation preserves family farms and good-paying jobs, while maintaining a strong and stable domestic supply chain for sugar.
Foreign Subsidies Ripe for Reform
Massive subsidization by the world’s largest sugar producers – including Brazil, India, and Thailand – have led to rampant overproduction and predatory pricing on the world market. Learn more about how foreign subsidies threaten U.S. farms and jobs.
Oppose Unilateral Disarmament
U.S. sugar producers support a zero-for-zero approach, including the bipartisan legislation introduced by Representatives Cammack and Kildee, and oppose any legislation that would eliminate or damage existing U.S. sugar policy without similar concessions by foreign subsidizers.
Eliminating or weakening the current U.S. sugar policy unilaterally would sacrifice efficient American farmers, and threaten 151,000 American jobs, purely for the benefit of those countries that continue to cheat the system, subsidizing, and dumping their overproduction on the world market.