The Tariff on Sugar

Report Outline
Proposed Restriction of Tropical Competition
Condition of the Sugar Industry in Cuba
The Tariff, the Domestic Industry, the Consumer

Revision of the rates of duty on sugar imports will confront the special session of the Seventy-first Congress with one of the most complicated problems it will encounter in the framing of the tariff act of 1929, The sugar schedule has given rise to sharp controversy in nearly every previous tariff debate, This year new factors have entered the situation which measurably increase the difficulty of reaching a satisfactory solution.

Increases of;.at least 33 per cent in the rates of duty provided in the Fordney-McCumber tariff of 1922 were demanded by domestic beet and cane sugar producers as an absolute minimum, in hearings before the House Ways and Means Committee, And greater increases-ranging from 66 to more than 100 per cent-were urged by most of the witnesses, Spokesmen for Cuban planters, the Atlantic Coast refiners, and manufacturers of candy and soft drinks asserted, on the other hand, that higher duties would be burdensome to consumers, while benefiting only a small proportion of the farmers of the United States, Problems of foreign and colonial policy have been injected into the controversy by Cuban opposition to any action which would restrict present markets for Cuban sugar, and by the efforts of domestic producers to induce Congress to limit the competition of sugar from the country's tropical dependencies.

Proposed Increase in Duty on Cuban Sugar

The new tariff bill will probably be reported to the House on April 22, or soon thereafter, The final decision of the Ways and Means Committee on the schedule dealing with “sugar, molasses and manufactures thereof” has not yet been announced, but the subcommittee that had charge of the preparation of this schedule recommended a basic sugar duty of 3.0 cents a pound.1 The corresponding rate under the Fordney-McCumber Act is 2.2 cents, and so the proposed increase would amount to 36.3 per cent.