Job-Killing Sugar Quotas Continue, Milking Consumers

Say bye bye to more American manufacturing jobs.  The Washington Post editorialized today about sugar import quotas and price supports contained in the bloated federal farm bill, which have “driven some U.S. candy producers either out of business or overseas” by increasing U.S. sugar prices.  It costs consumers a bundle in higher prices to benefit a handful of subsidized American sugar producers, while antagonizing and impoverishing poor countries in the Caribbean and Latin America.  The President has criticized the bloated farm bill, but may not do anything to block it, given his weak political position and other priorities.  In Reason, Ronald Bailey describes the many ways that the current farm bill wastes taxpayer money and takes from the poor to give to the rich.  In the National Review, Fran Smith earlier wrote about “the outrageous U.S. sugar regime,” which has cost taxpayers billions to benefit “a small number of large sugar-cane and sugar-beet producers.”