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USDA limits specialty sugar imports

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says it will not allow additional specialty sugar imports into the U.S. during the next fiscal year.

The Foreign Agricultural Service this week announced the annual tariff-rate quotas—or TRQs—for imports of specialty sugars like organic or brown sugar were scaled back to meet minimum trade commitments under the WTO Uruguay Round Agreement, down about 200,000 metric tons raw value from previous levels.

Raw cane sugar imports were left unchanged from recent years.

American Sugar Alliance board members are thanking the administration for its efforts, saying dumped foreign sugar has harmed domestic producers for way too long, but this move puts American sugar first.

Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Stephen Alexander Vaden says in the last 20 years, sugar imports have more than doubled, and producers have lost 15 percent of the U.S. sugar market to imports.