The Sweetener Users Association (SUA) has always valued the role that both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative play in administering sugar policies and import programs. With the authority to increase tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) vested in USDA and the ability to allocate these quotas established in USTR, both…
Dear Mr. Secretary: We commend you for the Department of Agriculture’s recent actions to increase supplies to the U.S. sugar market to avoid a damaging shortage. Most recently, USDA asked the Department of Commerce to provide an additional 200,000 tons of refined sugar imports from Mexico. Unfortunately, despite this and other positive steps, we continue…
Dear Secretary Perdue: We write today to express our concern regarding the refined sugar shortage expected for the remainder of the 2019-2020 marketing year. While we are encouraged that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the US Trade Representative have recently taken steps to provide for additional sugar imports, we request that USDA take…
Following a decision by the Court of International Trade, the Department of Commerce is presently circulating to interested parties a set of amendments to the 2014 agreements suspending antidumping and countervailing duty investigations with respect to sugar imported from Mexico. A preliminary review of the draft amendments indicates that they are identical in substance to…
On June 11, 2019, SUA joined a group of 965 national, state and local agricultural associations and companies in a letter urging Congress to quickly ratify the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). The full letter is available below.
On behalf of America’s food and beverage manufacturers, who use sugar to make the products U.S. consumers know and love, congratulations on your confirmation to serve as Chief Agricultural Negotiator for the U.S. Trade Representative. You will soon be inundated with a host of issues to digest, but we write to call your attention to…
The Sweetener Users Association (SUA) appreciates the opportunity to comment on the draft memoranda on price suppression and the statutory analysis of the proposed amendment to the antidumping (AD) agreement on the investigation of sugar from Mexico. SUA’s members are food and beverage companies that use sugar and other caloric sweeteners in manufacturing their products,…
SUA’s members are food and beverage companies that use sugar and other caloric sweeteners in manufacturing their products, as well as trade associations representing these companies. Food companies that use significant amount of sugar in their operations employ 600,000 Americans directly, and account for many more jobs when economic multiplier effects are taken into account.…
These written comments are submitted on behalf of the Sweetener Users Association (SUA) in response to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) request for comments on “matters relevant to the modernization of [the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)] in order to inform the development of U.S. negotiating positions.” SUA commends USTR for…
We write today about the ongoing negotiations with Mexico regarding the antidumping and countervailing duty cases against Mexican sugar imports. As Senators who represent states with a large presence of food and beverage manufacturers, we are concerned that any trade renegotiation will increase sugar prices in the United States and hurt American consumers. It is…