Mexico votes to keep tax on soft drinks containing HFCS.

Mexico's lower house last week voted to keep a controversial tax on soft drinks using high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), potentially complicating negotiations for a U.S.-Mexico sweetener accord. The 20-percent drinks tax has been in place since January 1 this year and is seen as having effectively blocked imports of HFCS, imported primarily from the United States, that compete with Mexican sugar in the nation's massive and lucrative soft-drinks industry.

Many voices in U.S. industry have demanded the tax be lifted as a condition to reaching a sweetener accord between the trade partners over how much sugar Mexico can export to U.S. markets and how much HFCS U.S. producers can send to Mexico. Keeping the tax puts doubt on the possibility of a prompt resolution to the four-year sweetener-trade controversy, which has appeared on the brink of agreement for most of the past six months.

"Those (soft-drinks makers) who use high fructose corn syrup will be taxed 20 percent," said Antonio Silva, a lawmaker for the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party and a secretary for the house trade commission.