Senators introduce FTA, anti-sugar supports bills

Senators introduce FTA, anti-sugar supports bills    A bipartisan handful of senators Tuesday introduced legislation to support Congress' passage of several pending U.S. free trade agreements and calls to end anticompetitive supports for the country's sugar manufacturing industry.
   Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Joseph Lieberman, Id.-Conn., proposed the so-called 2011 Creating American Jobs Through Exports Act, which calls for congressional passage of U.S. free trade deals with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. The bill would also reinstate President Obama's trade negotiating authority.
   'Passage and adoption of the three pending trade agreements would be an immediate action to spur economic growth by opening up markets for U.S. businesses. With unemployment hovering around 10 percent, American businesses can't afford to be sitting on the sideline while other nations pursue trade agreements that will put them multiple steps ahead,' said Portman in a statement.
   Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Mark Kirk, R-Ill., announced the Stop Unfair Giveaway and Restrictions (SUGAR) Act.
   “The sugar support program costs consumers $4 billion a year to disproportionally benefit a limited group of wealthy sugar producers,” Shaheen said. 'We must stop sugar’s sweet deal.”
   Shaheen noted that price supports keep the cost of U.S. sugar artificially high, nearly twice the world price, which causes significant problems for consumers and sugar-using industries.
   “Sugar price supports are an unnecessary market intervention that have no place in our 21st century economy,” she said. “It’s my aim to eliminate such antiquated government spending programs.”
   The senator's office estimated there are about 4,700 growers of sugarcane and sugar beets and U.S. consumers are subsidizing them in the amount of $4 billion a year through higher prices. Additionally, buyers and sellers are prevented from trading freely because of special restrictions on imports and domestic production.
   No other U.S. crop is subject to similar restrictions, making the current price supports an unfair deal for consumers, Shaheen said.
   The senator highlighted a recent report by Promar International, a food and agriculture consulting firm, which found the high sugar prices were responsible for the loss of 112,000 jobs lost in sugar-using industries between 1997 and 2009. A 2006 Commerce Department study estimated that for every sugar-growing job saved through high U.S. sugar prices, about three manufacturing jobs are lost.
   Pro-free trade groups welcomed the proposed bills.
   'We applaud Sens. Portman and Lieberman for introducing a bill that calls on Congress to approve the three pending free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, and makes the case for restoring presidential Trade Promotion Authority,' said Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC). 'All three FTAs are critical to maximizing U.S. economic growth and job creation, and helping our exporters — from small- and medium-sized businesses to large companies with worldwide operations — maintain and expand their foothold in these three dynamic markets.'
   NFTC has also long advocated reform of the current U.S. sugar program, which sets artificially low import quotas and applies high tariffs on imports exceeding those limits — raising prices for American industry and consumers.
   'As the debate over the 2012 farm bill is soon to begin, we applaud Sens. Shaheen and Kirk for taking an early stand and calling into question current U.S. sugar policy,' Reinsch said. 'Sugar prices are at an all-time high, and this issue not only affects consumers but U.S. sugar-using industries and the thousands of workers they employ.'