The U.S. Department of Commerce released the specific draft sugar agreements initialed by the governments of United States and Mexico and representatives of the Mexican sugar industry on June 14.
This follows months of negotiations and further technical consultations between the two governments and the sugar growing and refining industries of both countries.
On June 6, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and Mexican Secretary of Economy Ildefonso Guajardo announced an agreement in principle to amend the agreements suspending the antidumping and countervailing duty investigations on sugar from Mexico. The draft amendments released June 14 reflect this agreement in principle and address the injury found to have been caused to the U.S. sugar industry by sugar imported from Mexico.
Under the amendments, the amount of raw sugar imported from Mexico would increase from 47% to 70%, ensuring a greater supply of sugar for U.S. sugar refiners.
In addition, the dividing line between raw and refined sugar would be reduced from a polarity of 99.5 to 99.2, thus ensuring that estandar sugar would be considered refined sugar subject to the refined price and a limit of 30%.
For additional needs sugar allocated after May 1, the dividing line would revert back to 99.5 polarity and the 70/30 ratio would not apply. In addition, all raw sugar imported into the U.S. from Mexico must arrive freely flowing in bulk in the hold of an oceangoing vessel.
Finally, the minimum price of raw sugar would be increased from 22.25 cents per pound to 23 cents per pound, and the minimum price of refined sugar would increase from 26 cents per pound to 28 cents per pound.
Taken together, these amendments provide a significant improvement and are designed to address the concerns raised by the U.S. sugar industry with the operation of the Suspension Agreements.
The department is inviting interested parties to submit comments through Enforcement and Compliance's Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Centralized Electronic Service System (ACCESS) by 5 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) on June 21, 2017. Rebuttal comments, limited to those points raised in the initial comments, are due by 5 p.m. EDT on June 26, 2017. ACCESS is available to registered users at access.trade.gov and is available in the Central Records Unit, room B8024 of the main Department of Commerce building.
The department will consider the comments and rebuttal comments before making its final decision with respect to the text of any finalized amendments. The department is currently scheduled to sign final amendments to the agreements by June 30, 2017.