MEXICO CITY—The sugar barons of Florida, Alfonso and José Fanjul, have been equal-opportunity political donors for decades, showering largess on the campaigns of Democrats and Republicans alike to ensure that lawmakers will protect the American sugar industry.
When Donald J. Trump was preparing to take office as president, the Fanjul brothers wrote another check. Among the contributors to Mr. Trump’s inaugural festivities in January was Florida Crystals, a Fanjul-owned company that contributed half a million dollars.
The brothers most likely had more on their mind than a sumptuous ball. Led by the Fanjuls, large American sugar producers and refiners were eager for the new administration to tackle some business left unfinished by the Obama administration: an agreement to control imports of Mexican sugar.
Now, with a Monday deadline for the United States and Mexico to settle on an accord, businesses on both sides of the border are watching to gauge what the sugar negotiations signal about Washington’s approach to renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.
“In Mexico everybody is looking at the sugar agreement because it’s a thermometer of how things are going to be managed,” said Juan Cortina Gallardo, the president of Mexico’s sugar chamber, which represents refiners. “It’s a politically sensitive and charged issue.”
The sugar industry has been at the center of the most contentious trade issues between Mexico and the United States since Nafta was first negotiated in the early 1990s.
Even then, the protracted tussle over just one product raises questions about how quickly Nafta’s renegotiation could bog down if the Trump administration decides to open multiple fronts in rewriting the accord. Talks with Mexico and Canada could begin as early as August, and the administration has offered very little detail about what it hopes to accomplish.
Whatever the American sugar industry wrests from the negotiations will have effects that spread far beyond the cane fields of Florida and southeastern Mexico. The strands of the sugar story suggest just how intricate the weave of international trade can be.
It is up to Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross to find a compromise that Mexican negotiators will accept; otherwise, he risks a trade war.
Source: www.nytimes.com