Welcome to Cato Daily Podcast

the Anastasia Yuglova. A major farm bill is currently moving

through Congress and giving policy makers a chance to cut damaging farm subsidies.

In the latest Tax and Budget Bulletin, Cato Scholar Chris Edwards zeros in on U.S. sugar restrictions,

which keep domestic sugar prices more than two times higher than world prices.

Today, Chris and I discuss how cutting these subsidies would benefit average Americans,

make U.S. manufacturing more competitive, and end unfair benefits for a small group of wealthy sugar

barons.

The U.S. Sugar program is pretty complex, but let's just pair it down to the simple pieces.

Well, for decades, ever since the 1930s, the United States has protected its sugar producers,

sugar cane growers in the South and sugar beet growers in other parts of the country.

The Federal Sugar Program basically has three parts.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture guarantees minimum prices for sugar producers.

So there's no free market prices in the sugar industry.

Secondly, they maintain those high domestic prices by trade restrictions.

For example, we currently only import about 15% of our sugar here in the United States,

but a couple decades ago, when the market was freer, we imported half of our sugar.

And the third part of the federal sugar program is detailed production quotas. The federal

sugar program is detailed production quotas. The federal government by decree has decided that

exactly 54.35% of sugar in the United States is going to be

beat sugar and exactly 45.65

percent is going to be cane sugar. The federal government allocates specific

...