Dear Madame Ambassador:

Members of the Sweetener Users Association (SUA) would like to thank you and your colleagues at the Department of Agriculture for the steps you have taken this year to make additional supplies of raw sugar available to the U.S. market. Most recently, USDA extended the period for entry of 2021/22 raw sugar under the WTO tariff rate quota (TRQ) until December 31. We appreciate these efforts.

At the same time, unfortunately these measures have not proven sufficient to achieve a normal level of supply availability. According to the main sugar market reporter, Sosland Publishing, as of earlier this month, “beet processors remained out of the spot market and out of the 2022-23 market.” In other words, these sellers are not offering new sales of sugar at any price. Sosland also observed that “spot sugar supplies will not be ample even as the new [fiscal] year starts with early-processed beet sugar committed and some processors using the supply to fulfill 2021-22 contracts that were pushed into 2022-23.”

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