Cafta and Sugar Quotas

OpinionJournal :

The American sugar industry is so strongly advantaged by quotas, tariffs and subsidies that total sugar imports have declined by about a third since the 1990s. Cafta would allow additional sugar imports from the Central American nations totaling 107,000 metric tons in the first year. Annual U.S. sugar production is about 7.8 million metric tons, so the effect of Cafta is to raise sugar imports into America by about one day's sugar production, or as Mr. Portman puts it, 'approximately one teaspoon of sugar per week per adult American.' That threat--a teaspoon of sugar a week--has caused the U.S. sugar lobby to focus its efforts on killing Cafta. And it may succeed. The U.S. government agreed not to free up the sugar market in the 2004 trade pact with Australia. American sugar producers claim they are not against free trade. But only trade agreements approved by the World Trade Organization are acceptable to them; any trade agreements reached between America and other nations evidently are not. American sugar imports would depress sugar prices, they say. Well, American sugar prices today are about three times the world market's, so some price reduction would be good for Americans, just as lower gasoline prices would be.

I am a huge fan of free trade. I will concede to the applicability of using tarrifs and other protectionist measure against countries that 'cheat' in some other fashion, refussal to honor our intellectual property for example, but tarrifs purely as a protectionist measure are just plain wrong. They hurt our citizens far more than they help them and they can be crippling to developing nations. Trade is a deal where everyone wins, and protectionism makes everyone lose. Our sugar tariffs are amoung the most aggregious anti-trade policies we have. We should unilaterally do away with them, if we can get a regional free trade deal in the process, so much the better.