By ALG Staff
Big candy company’s like Hershey should take note of a new study just released by the Americans for Limited Government Foundation. The study by College of Charleston Business Profession Mark Hartley identifies a proposal known as the zero to zero policy as being the way to break the decades long fight between Big Candy and Big Sugar that gets revisited in every farm bill before Congress.
Read the “A Case for Zero to Zero Sugar Policy” here.
Currently, the United States along with countries like Brazil provide farm supports for sugar producers. Naturally, U.S. sugar farmers fear that if U.S. supports end while those provided by Brazil (the dominant sugar producer in the world) continue, they will be buried under a flood of cheap, subsidized sugar.
The ingenious gridlock breaker is known as Zero to Zero Sugar Policy, where Congress passes legislation promoting the end of U.S. sugar supports when other producers around the world do the same. The idea, which has been introduced as a resolution by Representative Ted Yoho (R-FL), is to direct the U.S. government to negotiate the end of foreign sugar price supports through the World Trade Organization. Once those subsidies are addressed and a free market can take shape, U.S. sugar policy, including its tariffs, quotas and price supports, would finally be eliminated.
An elegant solution to an otherwise intractable problem, that ends up creating a true free market for the cost of sugar around the world.
This is an outcome that should please everyone given the free market rhetoric emanating from both sides of the debate.