That’s about how much the U.S. economy would gain from removing all sugar price supports and trade barriers right now.
But the sugar lobby, and their supporters in Congress and, sadly (not to mention confusingly), some conservative groups, are pushing a “Zero-for-Zero” sugar policy, which would essentially end U.S. sugar support programs only when other sugar-producing countries do the same. Seton Motley, president of Less Government puts it this way in an article for the Daily Caller:
It’s called zero-for-zero. Where we approach the planet and say “You get rid of your trade barriers, and we’ll get rid of ours.” In other words, we have zero protectionism — and so does everyone else. Right now, it’s being proposed for sugar…
“Consider that there are more than 100 sugar producing countries worldwide, and there are also basically 100 different sugar policies, each of which includes various forms of government intervention,” [a supply-chain management researcher in a recent study] continues. “[A] free market approach rewards the best and most efficient business people and not the most heavily subsidized producer,…[zero for zero] could stabilize domestic and ultimately world market sugar prices… [Getting] government out of markets creates free markets, and free markets lead to free and fair markets, and that, in the final analysis, is where world sugar needs to be.”
Well sure it does. The question is: what should the United States do while we are waiting for this nirvana to materialise, a process that would be very lengthy indeed? I would suggest that doing ourselves a favour and abandoning the terrible U.S. sugar policy—costing the economy billions of dollars a year through artificially high sugar prices and, now, government sugar purchases—is a good start. Let other countries distort their markets and subsidise sugar importers’ consumption, as is their wont. We don’t have to follow them, and American consumers and businesses would benefit from a freer domestic market in sugar.