In the last 24 hours, the Trump administration announced new protectionist measures for two supermarket staples: sugar and tomatoes. It’s about time!
Billed as an “America First Trade Win,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that it will allow “no additional imports of specialty sugars beyond what U.S. international obligations dictate.” It explains, “Over the last 20 years, sugar imports have more than doubled and producers have lost 15% of the U.S. sugar market to imports, leading to closures of mills and processors — economic and financial losses that impact farmers, rural communities, and consumers. This decision begins to right the ship.”
Of course, the federal government already runs a protectionist racket to protect domestic sugar producers. Thanks to the U.S. Sugar Program, which has restricted imports through a strict tariff-rate quota since 2002, Americans pay more than twice as much for sugar as the rest of the world. To that, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins says: Not good enough! We need to constrict the supply of foreign sugar even more than we already do. Never mind that the sugar program already costs us 17,000 to 20,000 jobs in the food-production industry and makes consumers pay up to $4 billion more for food every year. That is the price we must pay for a truly “America First” policy.
As for tomatoes, we will be rescued from the low prices of tomatoes from Mexico through a 17 percent “anti-dumping duty” — a favorite tool of the crony capitalist lobbying for “protection.” It’s not “America First” unless Americans are paying $1.36 more for a pound of tomatoes than our next- door neighbors.
By the way, we just got a new inflation report out today showing that consumer price increases accelerated in June. As the Wall Street Journal reports, “Consumer prices rose 2.7 percent in June from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Tuesday, faster than May’s increase of 2.4 percent.”
What is driving that boost in inflation? Why, it’s commonly imported goods. “Prices of furniture, toys and clothes — items that tend to be sensitive to tariffs — posted larger increases in June.” And from the New York Times: “Prices for appliances, specifically, rose 1.9 percent, up from 0.8 percent. The apparel index increased 0.4 percent, snapping multiple months of declining prices.”
Happy shopping, American consumer. Only two and a half weeks until Liberation Day 2.0.