A sweet thing

Scandalous U.S. sugar policies--how sweet they aren't

Date published: 3/29/2006

A sweet thing

Big Sugar, Beltway pols have one going

AN OUT-OF-STATE college basketball player nicknamed "Too Sweet," some years ago failing to meet even the low academic standards normally available to those with a killer jump shot, was cruelly redubbed by a sportswriter "Too Dumb." The U.S. government's subsidies to the domestic sugar industry--subsidies that pilfer your grocery budget--are both sweet and dumb.

They are sweet if you happen to be one of America's 17 largest sugar growers, who together rake in half the boodle distributed by Congress and the president (actually, many presidents) through the price-support program. The same applies if you're a Washington politician in a position to prop up Big Sugar, which has been getting government handouts of some description since the War of 1812. In their new book "Getting America Right," Edwin Feulner of the Heritage Foundation and Doug Wilson of townhall.com note that congressional and presidential candidates have collected $9.7 million in campaign contributions since the year 2000.

The subsidies are dumb, however, if you are in the 99 percent of Americans cut out of the sugar racket. Over the last decade, American consumers have paid two to three times the average world price for sugar because of tariffs and quotas, and up to seven times what people pay in countries where the climate is most conducive to sugar-growing. A Commerce Department study finds that American citizens' compelled charity to the sugar barons costs shoppers $3 billion a year.

But it isn't primarily householders harmed by what Messrs. Feulner and Wilson call "the poster child of dysfunctional farm benefits." The Commerce Department also finds, writes The Wall Street Journal, that artificially high sugar prices, which batter the candy industry and other confectioners, are costing America jobs--three for every one the subsidies save. Some such industries are scooting off to Canada, where sugar costs less than half its Stateside price because of limits on sugar imports. What's more, even as Uncle Sam preaches the joys of free markets to Third World nations, he's making sure, through cynical trade barriers, that sugar farmers in some developing countries stay poor.

As the example of the hapless Too Sweet demonstrates, academia maintains some criteria by which those in its sphere must abide. The federal sugar-support program is evidence of the standards of national politics, standards that also merit expulsions.

Follow us on

Date published: 3/29/2006