Saturday, January 28, 2017

This is how much Americans pay for sugar protectionism: chart ... by gimleteye

Follow on Twitter: @gimleteyemiami

Bloomberg writes, "With talk of border tariffs, it’s worth considering who ends up paying for protectionism. The U.S. sugar industry enjoys quotas limiting imports from countries including Mexico. Raw-sugar futures that serve the needs of U.S. producers closed Friday in New York at 29.1 cents per pound, 43 percent higher than the futures used by the rest of the global industry."

Actually, Floridians end up paying for federal protectionism of Big Sugar in other ways: trillion dollar health care costs due to overconsumption of sugar, higher food prices, wrecked coastal estuaries and dying Everglades, plus cratered small businesses and real estate values on Florida's coasts due to unremitting pollution from Lake Okeechobee.

Federal protectionism has added costs beyond these: full-funded disinformation campaigns and propaganda by Big Sugar including an array of mouthpieces armed with fake facts.

2 comments:

Steve Hagen said...

As I have said before the sugar cane business in Florida would be a good industry to offshore. It is a polluting business that does not create many good paying jobs. It creates more harm than good.

Anonymous said...

Excellent and timely post. Great opportunity to make this clear now that public is listening to all of this tariff talk. Pls keep talking about this. Thanks!