It's Time To End The Job-Killing U.S. Sugar Policy

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Investors Business Daily:

Sugar Subsidies: Bitter about paying artificially high prices for the non-artificial sweetener everyone uses just so a politically connected family can enjoy the sweet life? It's time lawmakers put a lid on the honey pot.

An Iowa State University study has found that the federal sugar program costs U.S. consumers roughly $3.5 billion a year and deprives the workforce of 20,000 jobs. This New Deal-era framework of barriers on sugar imports and of price supports for domestic sugar is a racket that benefits only a few, in particular the Fanjul family of Florida.

In a letter to House leaders, a group of lawmakers from both parties call U.S. sugar policy "the last of the command-and-control commodity programs that has yet to be reformed." The 22 representatives insist that Congress should "have a robust debate about sugar policy during consideration of the 2012 farm bill."

They write: "No other farm program is deliberately designed to transfer income from American consumers and workers to a small, but 'special,' interest group of sugar processors and growers."

The sugar program has led to more job decay than candy has caused cavities. To avoid high prices at home, food manufacturers that use sugar have moved jobs to Canada, where the price of sugar is less than half the U.S. price, and to Mexico, where they're two-thirds the American rate.

Kraft, Hershey and Brach's are three brand-name companies that have closed U.S. facilities and moved their operations out of the country.

The toll of these moves is dear. The Commerce Department has determined that for every sugar-growing or sugar-harvesting job the sugar program saves, nearly three sugar-related manufacturing jobs are lost.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that during a five-year period beginning in 1997, more than 10,000 jobs were lost in the sugar-containing industries.