Dear Mr. Under Secretary:
Thank you for the time you and your staff gave to the Sweetener Users Association recently. We appreciated your concern for current sugar markets and would like to take this opportunity to provide an overview and additional detail on the serious problems currently affecting the U.S. sugar market.
The Problem: Among several other market factors, high-polarity raw sugar is being imported to fill the tariff-rate quota (TRQ) for refined specialty sugar. This sugar is not available to end users without further processing and makes usable supplies appear greater than they actually are. This seems to be discouraging policy actions to increase supplies even though market prices are at historic highs, trading at parity with high-tier imports.
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