4.6 • 12 Ratings
🗓️ 27 October 2025
⏱️ 5 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
The Fanjul family has been wooing politicians for decades, but their bet on the Trump administration is their best yet, after the president added tariffs for foreign competitors and pushed Coca-Cola to use its cane sugar to make American soda great again.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Monday, October 27th. |
| 0:05.0 | Today on Forbes, meet the Florida Sugar Barrens worth $4 billion and getting sweet deals from Donald Trump. |
| 0:13.0 | To celebrate Donald Trump's second inauguration earlier this year, Coca-Cola CEO James Quincy came to Washington with an appropriate symbol |
| 0:22.0 | of appreciation, a commemorative edition of the president's favorite beverage, Diet Coke. |
| 0:28.2 | But the meeting got a little tense when Trump asked why the company doesn't use cane sugar |
| 0:32.5 | in its signature soda, commonly referred to as Mexican Coke. And Quincy demurred, saying that, quote, |
| 0:39.6 | there wasn't enough supply. Trump wasn't buying it, according to the book 2024, how Trump |
| 0:45.9 | retook the White House, and soon he called up one of his top political donors and friend for more |
| 0:51.0 | than 40 years, Jose Pepe Fanhul, the 81-year-old Palm Beach sugar magnate |
| 0:56.6 | who lives near Mar-a-Lago, to ask if the information was true. That conversation appears to have |
| 1:02.5 | planted the seed for what transpired in the months following the inauguration, which Fahunuch |
| 1:07.2 | attended after donating nearly $1 million. Over the summer, when Quincy returned to Washington, |
| 1:13.9 | Trump brought up the cane sugar issue again, |
| 1:16.2 | and then shortly after, he announced on social media |
| 1:18.9 | that Coca-Cola would create an entirely new line, |
| 1:22.2 | saying, quote, |
| 1:23.1 | this will be a very good move by them. |
| 1:25.1 | You'll see, it's just better. |
| 1:29.5 | Fanhul and his siblings, |
| 1:34.7 | who control a sugar and real estate empire, including domino sugar and Florida crystals, |
| 1:40.1 | the Forbes estimates to be worth some $4 billion, have been jockeying for the Coca-Cola business ever since. Even as the highly anticipated U.S. cane sugar line is expected to begin |
| 1:45.8 | production soon, as Coca-Cola confirmed it would launch this fall, details of where the Atlanta-based |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Forbes, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Forbes and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.