May 26, 2022
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
World sugar exports roiled creates unique opportunity
By Rick Manning
For years major U.S. domestic sugar users like the candy industry, have pushed for the elimination of the U.S. government sugar price support system with the goal of flooding the market with sugar from around the world.
Now Americans should realize why this was a spectacularly bad idea absent mutual agreements to end subsidies for major producers. India, the second largest exporter of sugar, has just announced that they are capping the amount of sugar they will export partially due to food shortage concerns.
This follows announcements coming out of Brazil, that the world’s largest sugar exporter is cancelling sugar export contracts, diverting their sugar cane to ethanol production. The Brazilian decision is driven by high energy prices, altering the amount of sugar available on the world market.
The good news is that U.S. sugar production remains strong, but the bad news is that in 2020, the U.S. accounted for 8.3 percent of the world’s sugar imports, about one-third of the total consumed in the States.
If not for robust American sugar production, the costs of foodstuffs containing the natural sweetener in our country would be skyrocketing, proving the value of not putting sugar market at the mercy of heavily subsidized foreign sugar exporters.
Interestingly, the limitations and retrenching of some of the world’s largest sugar producers creates a unique opportunity for the Biden administration to restore honesty to the international sugar market.
It is much easier to convince countries to end their sugar subsidies in an environment where they are restricting or ending balance of trade enhancing exports, than in the face of rapidly expanding subsidized export policies, and this provides the opening that many in favor of ending sugar subsidies intelligently have been waiting to occur.
Congressmen Dale Kildee (D-Mich.) and Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) have legislation which, if passed, would trigger a process for the U.S. government to end the domestic sugar program once the president certifies that major sugar exporting trade partners have agreed to end their price distorting subsidies.
Called Zero for Zero, the resolution has never been more pertinent as the choices being made by the top two sugar exporters provide an open door to negotiating away their subsidies.
Every American knows that systems seem to be breaking everywhere without any rational explanation. In the case of this one agriculture program, the global supply chain shock may just provide the foundation for ending it.
Wouldn’t that be refreshing if the calamitous Joe Biden term of office led to achieving one of American conservatives long-held goals – ending the sugar program and creating a level playing field for American farmers to compete.
Let’s hope the Biden administration takes advantage of this opportunity to turn lead into gold, even though the unfortunate reality is that the White House seems to create a crazy reverse alchemy where everything they touch turns into bio-matter.
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2022/05/world-sugar-exports-roiled-creates-unique-opportunity/
President Rick Manning on Conservative Commandos: A Moral Fabric Still Upholds the U.S. Constitution
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i99we2C4AY
Elon Musk and the baby bust
By James Freeman
Due to recent declines in stock prices, Elon Musk is now down to his last $200 billion. But despite all the sellers in today’s market, Mr. Musk is not letting those vast herds get him down. Instead, the Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder is once again offering compelling commentary on Twitter.
Today Mr. Musk is sharing a graphic from the Wall Street Journal and tweeting: “USA birth rate has been below min sustainable levels for ~50 years...Contrary to what many think, the richer someone is, the fewer kids they have. I am a rare exception. Most people I know have zero or one kid.”
Perhaps Mr. Musk will consider broadening his social circle. According to a March story in People magazine, he has fathered eight children.
As a society’s wealth and income rise, people tend to have fewer children. As Mr. Musk notes, for virtually the entire period of the last 50 years, America’s total fertility rate has been running below the 2.1 kids per woman that is considered necessary for a generation to replace itself. The trend has been even more bleak in a number of other industrialized countries. Earlier this month Mr. Musk tweeted in reaction to news of the largest decline in Japan’s population since at least 1950: “At risk of stating the obvious, unless something changes to cause the birth rate to exceed the death rate, Japan will eventually cease to exist. This would be a great loss for the world.”
It surely would and while things are not so dire in the U.S., today’s news shows only modest improvement in a dismal long-term trend. The Journal’s Janet Adamy and Anthony DeBarros report: “U.S. births increased last year for the first time in seven years, according to federal figures released Tuesday . . . American women had about 3.66 million babies in 2021, up 1% from the prior year, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. It was the first increase since 2014 . . . Births still remain at historically low levels after peaking in 2007 and then plummeting during the recession that began the end of that year. The total fertility rate—a snapshot of the average number of babies a woman would have over her lifetime—was 1.66 last year, up from 1.64 the prior year, when it fell to the lowest level since the government began tracking it in the 1930s. ‘This minor blip up still leaves us on a long-term trajectory towards lower births,’ said Phillip Levine, an economics professor at Wellesley College.”
Perhaps we shouldn’t expect too much in the short term, either, as current conditions could further discourage potential parents from having children. The Journal reporters note that a “sharp rise in inflation and a shortage of baby formula could put pressure on births”.
Beyond the obvious point that it sure would be nice if the United States of America continued to exist, there’s also the need for creative human beings to solve tomorrow’s problems. To be crass, there’s also the not inconsequential need to service $30 trillion in federal debt. On Wednesday the Congressional Budget Office will issue its latest official guesses about the future of the U.S. economy and federal budgets. But we can already say with certainty that the massive challenges to be reported do not become easier to manage with an ever-shrinking population of workers.
Hmm. If only there were some way to enable and encourage more births in the U.S., and also perhaps some sort of mechanism to see if people who don’t currently live in the U.S. might wish to come here and become productive citizens.
To view online: https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-and-the-baby-bust-11653428387?mod=opinion_lead_pos11