Sticky situation.

What is the cost of free trade? Jobs. A WTO reform of rules on world sugar will cost 150,000 jobs and close 80 sugar factories in Europe, according to farmers protesting the decision. The European Union is the largest beet-sugar producer in the world, and it costs US$660 a ton. Comparatively, cane sugar produced in tropical regions costs between $90 and $150 per ton to produce. More jobs will almost certainly be the result in places like Brazil, where labor is cheaper and less regulated and farmland for cane sugar is plentiful.

Starting in July, European sugar farmers will no longer benefit from a $747 per-ton subsidy that was guaranteed them--three times the world price for sugar. That has European farmers, here protesting in Belgium, up in arms--a battle they will almost certainly lose, now that the World Trade Organization is finally beginning to do its job: formalizing free trade, no matter who wins or loses.