Alliance for Sugar Trade Reform Unmasked as Greed-Driven Impostors Seeking Lucrative U.S. and EU Sugar Markets Says the American Sugar Alliance.

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 30, 1999--

The following is a statement by the American Sugar Alliance:

American sugar farmers have unmasked the newly formed "Global Alliance for Sugar Trade Reform" and revealed the usual suspects attacking U.S. sugar policy to increase their own profits.

"The sugar users have gone global--getting countries like Australia, Brazil, and Thailand to front their desire for cheap, subsidized foreign sugar. The debate has moved from Washington D.C. (where they have repeatedly failed to dismantle U.S. sugar policy) to Washington State, where the international trade talks begin this week," said Jack Roney, senior economist of the American Sugar Alliance.

The Coalition for Sugar Reform, which consists of large multinational food companies who oppose U.S. sugar policy, have joined forces with several foreign countries who are lobbying to take a greater share of America's sugar market.

"It sounds good. The message of free trade resonates across the country, but these particular messengers strike a discordant note of hypocrisy and greed. Multinational food companies want cheap sugar, and these foreign sugar producers want to take over our sugar market and take jobs away from American farmers," Roney said.

Ironically, the countries taking the lead in pushing for sugar trade reform in the United States and European Union have extensive trade distorting practices in their own countries. These so-called the trade reformers are not interested in reforming trade practices worldwide, but only in countries that would provide attractive markets for their sugar.

"Australia's Queensland Sugar Corporation is essentially a state-sanctioned monopoly that controls all buying and selling of sugar in the country," Roney said. "And as for Brazil, they have huge ethanol subsidies for cane producers that distort sugar prices and allow them to dump sugar on the world market at prices below the cost of production."

While these foreign producers and international sugar users attack American sugar farmers with bogus studies and free trade rhetoric, they refuse to address the elaborate scheme of subsidies in their own countries and ignore the child labor abuses that are rampant in Brazil and lax environmental standards in many foreign sugar operations.

"No negotiator in his right mind would agree to GASTR demands," Roney said. Their goal is to drive U.S. sugar prices down to increase the profits of huge multinational food and candy companies and benefit foreign sugar producers. There would be no benefit whatsoever to the United States and certainly no benefit to the American consumer.

As evidence, Roney points to the fact that producer prices for refined sugar in the U.S. have dropped 13% since 1990, while consumer prices for refined sugar have not dropped at all. And prices for sugar containing products like cereal, candy, and baked goods have gone up as much as 30%. History shows there is no pass-through of savings to the consumer--reduce producer prices for sugar and food companies increase their profit margins.

American sugar policy works, and efficient American sugar farmers support genuine, multilateral reform to allow free trade in sugar around the world. However, American sugar producers reject the attempts of GASTR to force reforms in the U.S. and European Union until they are willing to put their own trade-distorting practices, monopolies, and subsidies on the table.

The American Sugar Alliance is confident that U.S. negotiators will see through the elaborate charade and strongly reject such thinly veiled attempts to re-write U.S. sugar policy to benefit multinational food companies and foreign sugar producers.