US Taxpayers Pay For Sugar Twice
Sugar Land, Texas is a nice place to live, according to Forbes and CNN. It is the headquarters for Imperial Sugar. This company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in early 2001. It has since managed to turn itself around partly through smart business decision, downsizing and effective implementation of new technologies. Having a Texas politician in the White House may have been beneficial as well.
Another large sugar company is Flo-Sun, Inc. Its owners, the Fanjul brothers, make huge donations to politicians both Red and Blue. Their reward, in the form of their share of protective tariffs and price floors, equals approximately $65 million annually.
NAFTA may mean that Mexico will be able to step up sugar exports. I can only assume that lobbyists for the US sugar industry have the ear of government and that they are looking for ways to prevent that from happening.
This post is an example of me starting out with an assumption and then not finding any really interesting facts to support it. I find it interesting that the Fanjul brothers belong to two groups of people that are pointed to as being special interest groups that buy politicians. They are owners of a huge agribusiness and they are also Cuban Americans. They get to have two interests served for the price of one. It’s no wonder they are so generous.
