NFTC seeks bigger U.S. sugar import quota

NFTC seeks bigger U.S. sugar import quota    A Washington-based trade group that promotes open trade asked U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a letter Friday to increase the sugar import quota immediately to alleviate a short supply for food manufacturers and reduce costs to consumers.
   U.S. law sets quotas for sugar imports from about 40 different countries. Any imports in excess of these quotas are subject to costly tariffs.
   However, world prices have recently increased above the historic norm. The price of raw cane sugar in the world market is over 17 cents per pound, or about 70 percent above its long-term average, and briefly exceeded 30 cents, triple the long-term average.

Reinsch

   The National Foreign Trade Council said despite the world sugar price increases, U.S. tariffs have stayed in place, meaning U.S. sugar prices have risen more sharply than world prices. U.S. wholesale refined sugar prices are now 53 cents per pound — substantially higher than the levels they reached after Hurricane Katrina, which shut down two major sugar refineries.

Vilsack

   'There is a simple way to alleviate the strain on consumers, businesses and their employees, and it requires no new legislation,' NFTC President Bill Reinsch wrote to Vilsack. 'You have the ability to increase the tariff rate quota for sugar imports immediately for an increase in raw and refined sugar tariff rate quotas that will allow stocks to return to a normal level.'