Sugar Producers Hurt by Colombian Trade Deal

Sugar Producers Hurt by Colombian Trade Deal

Conrad Says Pact "One More of a Thousand Cuts"

The Colombian "free-trade" deal approved yesterday by the Administration will erode the nation's sugar-producing industry -- shrinking farms and cutting jobs -- by dumping 50,000 tons of foreign-subsidized sugar on the U.S. domestic market annually, Senator Kent Conrad said.

"The Administration has just added Colombia to the growing list of competing nations that are eating away at our own domestic sugar market," Senator Conrad said. "Spoonful by spoonful, the Administration is killing domestic sugar production with foreign-subsidized sugar. It is a death of a thousand cuts."

Other nations that are negotiating to pour their unfairly-priced sugar on the United States, following this deal, include Thailand and South Africa.

Since the passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement last year, Senator Conrad has warned that the domestic sugar industry is in danger of being strangled by these unilateral trade deals. Each deal allows only a relatively small amount of foreign-subsidized sugar into the U.S., but the cumulative impact on the U.S. sugar industry could be devastating.

Senator Conrad has called on the Administration to move sugar negotiations to the World Trade Organization, where it could be regulated globally instead of through unilateral trade deals with individual countries or small groups of countries.

"The sugar industry is worth $2 billion in the Red River Valley alone," Senator Conrad said. "It is unacceptable that the Administration continues to trade away our jobs, our businesses and our farms."

http://conrad.senate.gov/~conrad/releases/06/02/2006228449.html