Posted on: Tuesday, December 23, 2003

Free-trade pact called threat to U.S. sugar

By Melinda Deslatte
Associated Press

BATON ROUGE, La. — Exiting and incoming governors of Louisiana took part in a protest to President Bush about a trade agreement that will allow more Central American sugar into the United States, saying it will devastate Louisiana's sugar industry.

Gov. Mike Foster and Gov.-elect Kathleen Blanco sent a letter yesterday to the president complaining that the Central American Free Trade Agreement negotiated by the Bush administration will "eventually lead to the destruction of the livelihood of 27,000 Louisianians employed in 15 mills, two refineries and hundreds of farms planting nearly 500,000 acres of sugar cane each year."

Foster and Blanco are asking Bush to take the sugar provisions out of CAFTA and to exclude sugar from other pending trade agreements, instead allowing it only to be negotiated through the World Trade Organization.

"Negotiating trade at a worldwide level is the only way our farmers will get a fair deal," Blanco said in a news release.

The pair also sent letters to the governors from 16 other sugar-producing states — including Bush's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — asking them to oppose the inclusion of sugar in CAFTA and to urge their congressional delegations to vote against the accord if sugar remains in the agreement.

Hawai'i also was among the states solicited for help. Sugar-growers here have opposed the free-trade agreement, saying it could spell the end of the sugar industry in the Islands.

Gov. Linda Lingle's office said last month that it sent a letter to President Bush asking that sugar remain exempt from any free-trade negotiations.

In Hawai'i, a once-dominant sugar industry showed signs of a small comeback last year. Although sugar represents just a small part of Hawai'i's $511 million agriculture industry, farm-level sales rose 11 percent to $64.3 million last year, while sales of raw sugar also rose almost 11 percent to $95.9 million.

Production of sugar cane for sugar increased about 11 percent to 2.1 million tons last year at Hawai'i's two remaining sugar companies, Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. of Maui and Gay & Robinson on Kaua'i, according to figures from the Hawaii Agricultural Statistics Service.

Included in the CAFTA deal, which still must be approved by Congress, was a provision under which four Central American countries will see the current quota of sugar they can ship into the United States rise by more than 75 percent next year.

The current limit is 111,000 tons. It will rise by 90,000 tons next year and then increase by 2 percent per year for the next 15 years. The amount of the U.S. market supplied by the Central American countries would total about 1 percent in the first year of the deal and rise to 1.4 percent at the end of 15 years.

But the sugar industry views any concession over sugar as the start of an eventual flood of cheap imported sugar as Bush pushes for additional trade agreements around the world.

Louisiana's congressional delegation has lobbied against including sugar in CAFTA. Sugar cane workers and farmers last week protested during a New Orleans visit by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick.