Richardcyoung.com

The Online Home of Author and Investor, Dick Young

  • Home
  • How We Are Different
  • Debbie Young
  • About Us
    • Foundation Principles
    • Contributors
  • Investing
    • You’ve Read The Last Issue of Intelligence Report, Now What?
  • Your Survival Guy
  • The Great Reset
  • The Swiss Way
  • My Rifles
  • Dividends and Compounding
  • Your Security
  • COVID-19
  • Dick Young
  • Key West
  • Paris
  • Dick’s R&B Top 100
  • Liberty & Freedom Map
  • Bank Credit & Money
  • Your Survival Guy’s Super States
  • NNT & Cholesterol
  • Work to Make Money/Invest to Save Money
  • Your Health
  • Ron Paul
  • US Treasury Yield Curve: My Favorite Investor Tool

Sugar Daddies in Congress

July 30, 2015 By Debbie Young

“The absurdity of the federal sugar program is legendary. Every year the government grants sugar processors nonrecourse loans linked to the amount of sugar the government says they can produce at a set price per pound,” writes the WSJ.

Read more here about one of Washington’s worst business welfare schemes.

Americans pay nearly twice as much per pound as foreigners do for sugar, thanks to U.S. import restrictions and subsidies. We’ve tilted at this corporate welfare for decades, but new political forces are aligning to take another run.

The absurdity of the federal sugar program is legendary. Every year the government grants sugar processors nonrecourse loans linked to the amount of sugar the government says they can produce at a set price per pound: 18.75 cents for raw cane sugar and 24.09 cents for refined beet sugar. If the market price is below the loan price when it’s time to sell, the processors simply forfeit their crop to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in lieu of repaying the loan. They can still make a profit thanks to the price guaranteed by the loan.

To ensure that imported sugar doesn’t drive down U.S. prices, provoking a sugar dump on Uncle Sam, there are also import quotas. Anything above the quotas gets hit with a hefty tariff—16 cents a pound on refined sugar.

Yet all of this central planning is harder than it sounds. According to a January 2014 USDA report, for the 2013 crop year the government’s net cost “to remove” sugar from the marketplace was $258 million. But sometimes there’s not enough sugar, as in 2010, and prices skyrocket. If the secretary of agriculture decides that shortages will drive prices too high, he can increase the quota. But he has to make sure that more imports won’t mean lower prices and thus sugar forfeitures to the feds. All the risk lies with consumers or taxpayers—not producers.

Related video:

If you’re willing to fight for Main Street America, click here to sign up for the Richardcyoung.com free weekly email.

Related Posts

  • Obamacare Exemption for Congress
  • The Case Against Sugar is Strong
  • Obama: With or Without Congress
  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Debbie Young
Debbie, editor-in-chief of Richardcyoung.com, has been associate editor of Dick Young’s investment strategy reports for over five decades. When not in Key West, Debbie spends her free time researching and writing in and about Paris and Burgundy, France, cooking on her AGA Cooker, driving her Porsche Boxter S through Vermont and Maine, and practicing yoga.
Latest posts by Debbie Young (see all)
  • Our Friend from Hungary Holding Court at “Thirsty” - March 31, 2023
  • In Chicago, Education Connects the Dots - March 30, 2023
  • A Threat to Our Constitutional System - March 29, 2023

Dick Young’s Must Reads

  • Gold’s 50-Year Price Explosion
  • WAR HAS BEGUN: What Advice Are You Giving Your Loved Ones?
  • Protection While Traveling in France
  • Florida: Enjoy Certain Freedoms and Individual Liberties
  • The Armed American Family: Part I
  • Tucker Carlson Interviews My Favorite Florida Farmer
  • Why Investors Should Forget Prices and Focus on Income
  • America’s States Rights Revolution
  • Joel Salatin: Meet the Real Mr. America
  • Why Some Kids Won’t Go Back to School, Ever

Disclosure

RSS Youngresearch.com

  • Schwab Down 30%, Fidelity, Vanguard, BlackRock, and You
  • BEWARE: The Road to Digital Currencies
  • Another Habit of Highly Successful and Fairly Wealthy People
  • The Greatest Threats to the American Economy
  • Your Survival Guy’s #1 Habit of Fairly Successful People
  • New Regulation Coming for CDS Market?
  • “You Just Have to Be Willing to Move Defensively”
  • Americans Are Fleeing Bank Deposits
  • If You’re a Highly Effective Person, We Should Talk
  • Trouble Now Brewing at Deutsche Bank

RSS Yoursurvivalguy.com

  • Schwab Down 30%, Fidelity, Vanguard, BlackRock, and You
  • Why Your Survival Guy Eschews Annuities
  • Government Debt Service a Growing Burden for Americans
  • BEWARE: The Road to Digital Currencies
  • Bad Guys Have Guns, Targets Must be Hardened
  • Another Habit of Highly Successful and Fairly Wealthy People
  • The Greatest Threats to the American Economy
  • Is America about to Deploy Star Wars-like X-Wings on the Battlefield?
  • Your Survival Guy’s #1 Habit of Fairly Successful People
  • Western Real Estate: From Zoom to Bust

Our Friend from Hungary Holding Court at “Thirsty”

Schwab Down 30%, Fidelity, Vanguard, BlackRock, and You

My Grandkids All Own Guns

Globalism Has Made America Dependent on Foreign Countries

The County Sheriff: America’s Last Hope

Is Modern Warfare Causing Cancer?

Copyright © 2023 | Terms & Conditions | About Us | Dick Young | Archives