Where We Stand:

The U.S. should shake off Big Sugar and reform its protectionist sugar policies.

When President Trump announced he would slap tariffs on steel and aluminum imports last month, critics pointed out he would be putting more jobs at risk among U.S. purchasers of those commodities than the jobs he would be protecting among U.S. producers. That’s bad economic policy.

But so is another, decades-old protectionist policy that also favors one industry at the expense of the broader economy. And this one, the U.S. sugar program, hits closer to home in Florida.

The federal government doesn’t pay taxpayer subsidies directly to sugar growers under the program. Instead, it props up prices for U.S. growers through a series of interventions in the free market, including setting a minimum price for sugar, restricting foreign imports, limiting domestic production and buying up surplus sugar.

U.S. food manufacturers and consumers wind up paying from $2.4 billion to $4 billion a year more for sugar because of the program, according to a 2017 study by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington, D.C. think tank. Sugar producers reap the benefits. To keep this sweet deal, Big Sugar has spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress and contributing to the campaigns of members of both parties.

Defenders of the program inevitably invoke the 142,000 people who work in the industry, including 12,500 in Florida. But the International Trade Commission, an independent federal agency, has found that the program costs three jobs in food manufacturing, a much larger industry, for every job it saves in sugar production.

Congress has an opportunity to reform the sugar program when members, now on recess, return to the U.S. Capitol this month. The chairmen of the House and Senate agriculture committees have said they hope to finish work by the end of April drafting the next five-year farm bill, and the sugar program is normally a part of that legislation. This is an opening for reform-minded lawmakers.

Members of both parties in both chambers are lining up behind a bill known as the Sugar Policy Modernization Act; it would reduce artificially high U.S. sugar prices by rolling back or eliminating price-support measures in the program. It’s a rare piece of legislation backed by consumer, business and environmental groups.

There’s a conspicuous absence of cosponsors on the bill from Florida. But businesses and consumers in the Sunshine State aren’t insulated from the higher prices that the sugar program imposes on the U.S. market. And the program remains an obstacle to the United States negotiating lower trade barriers abroad that would open more export markets to other farmers and manufacturers in Florida and throughout the country.

Defenders of the status quo argue that any reforms in the U.S. program should await the end of subsidies in all foreign countries that produce sugar. This you-first approach, spelled out in a bill from U.S. Rep. Ted Yoho of Gainesville, is a calculated guarantee of inaction on the issue. The U.S. can’t expect other countries to adopt fairer trade policies if it refuses to take the lead by repealing one of its own blatant offenders. The European Union, which also used to protect its sugar farmers, relaxed its restrictions in 2006 without waiting on the rest of the world, and delivered a big price break to its businesses and consumers.

The U.S. sugar program originated as a temporary policy during the Great Depression. It outlived its usefulness decades ago. Reform of the program should be a slam-dunk priority for any Florida Republican lawmaker who believes in the free market, and any Democrat who opposes crony capitalism.