Ask Your Lawmaker

Answer from: U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH)

Right now in the United States we pay about twice what the world going rate is on sugar, and that causes cookies and candies and all kind of other products to be more expensive at the supermarket, because of the sugar policy in America. And there are a fairly small number of very wealthy falimies in Florida that take advantage of this to the detriment of the rest of the country. So in my view we ought to let the market determine what the price of sugar ought to be and we shouldn’t have any sort of subsidy or any sort of tariffs on sugar. We ought to let the market determine the price of sugar.”

Reporter Matt Laslo: “Are these just arcane laws, why are they still in place?”

Chabot: “We have a lot of subsidies unfortunately on all kinds of products from peanuts and cotton to sugar and others as well. And each one of them sorta scratches the back of the other, and even though on an individual basis they would say the others aren’t very good, they think theirs is good and they all work together to keep all these subsidies on all these crops, so we pay higher prices at the super market because we have subsidies and we have tariffs on so many different products in this country. We ought to do away with them all and let the markets determine.

Answered on Apr 17th, 2008