During a focus group I observed earlier this year, the feeling that Capital Hill staff have about the 2014 farm bill became crystal clear.
Most participants felt that the farm bill took years to complete, it was passed after careful negotiation and reopening the bill to amend it so soon thereafter is foolish, especially with so many other important issues confronting Congress.
Apparently the candy industry didn’t get the memo.
Since January, the Big Candy lobby has been busy trying to convince Congress to pry open the just-passed farm bill and rewrite the sugar policy section. These efforts even included a sneak attack during debate of an aid package to Africa.
As the Senate Finance Committee considered the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) in April, Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey attempted to attach a sugar-related measure to the bill.
His amendment would have granted some developing countries far more access to the sugar market, resulting in more subsidized foreign surpluses here in America and making sugar policy much harder to operate.
Committee members Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who also serve as the chair and ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, led the efforts to kill Toomey’s amendment because it would undermine the 2014 farm bill.
In addition, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) pointed out during the meeting that the amendment could threaten relations with other key trading partners like Mexico, Central America, and dozens of other developing nations that depend on access to the U.S. sugar market.
America is the world’s biggest sugar importer, guaranteeing market share regardless of need to 41 countries (38 of which are developing countries). Toomey’s bill would have picked winners and losers in the market, resulting in fewer opportunities and lower prices for some developing nations.
Given this level of opposition, it is no wonder that Toomey’s scheme was rejected, 10-16. The panel’s top Republican and Democrat—Sens. Orin Hatch (R-Utah) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)—both opposed the plan.
And that’s a good thing since U.S. producers believed this latest attack could have jeopardized sugar policy’s ability not remain at no cost in future years.
The Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Food and Agricultural Policy Institute have all predicted that sugar policy will cost $0 over the five-year life of the current farm bill unless unexpected subsidized surpluses from abroad emerge—and the AGOA rider would have increased the likelihood of such surpluses.
Sugar’s no-cost status is one of the main reasons that our policy continues to enjoy such widespread and bipartisan congressional support.
In fact, the Toomey amendment is just the latest in a string of failures by candy company lobbyists looking to flood the U.S. market with subsidized sugar from abroad. Similar efforts have been voted down three times on the Senate floor, two times on the House floor, and by two House committees in the past three years alone.
If the goal is to truly help developing nations, the American Sugar Alliance believes that the best way to empower African sugar producers, and all producers around the world, is to fix the broken world sugar market.
Currency devaluation and subsidies by major exporters like Brazil, Thailand and India have created the world’s most volatile, thinly-traded commodity market.
A global Zero-for-Zero sugar policy would root out trade distorting subsidies worldwide and promote free trade and fair prices.
Big Candy has opposed this effort in fear that fewer global subsidies could lead to sugar prices that more reflect production costs. But thankfully, Hill staff members believe targeting foreign subsidies makes a whole lot of sense.