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U.S. sugar producers close to collapse as Alliance calls for higher tariffs on imports

The American Sugar Alliance is asking the U.S. Trade Representative to use Section 301 authorities to stop subsidized imports from harming farmers.

Rob Johansson tells Brownfield producers have lost more than $2 billion in sales in just the past two seasons because artificially cheap sugar on the global market has made current trade quotas ineffective.

“The tariff, we would argue, is outdated and hasn’t been updated in the past 26 years,” he explains. “We are asking for the administration to use its available trade authorities to raise those duties to a more appropriate level.”

Johansson says the Trump administration’s trade strategies have increased sugar tariffs somewhat over the past year, but “Those aren’t sufficient to remedy the issue of having those cheap sugar imports continue to flow into the United States and affect our domestic producers.”

The Alliance says U.S. imports from nearly all the top suppliers increased from 86% to nearly 3,000% between 2021 and 2025.

They say farmers are very close to forfeiture and likely to stop production if the flood of imports isn’t contained soon.

Johansson says comments will be reviewed as part of upcoming U.S. Trade Rep hearings in May.