Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013 - Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, as we heard last summer and again throughout this week's debate, government subsidies are at the heart of both our agricultural and nutritional policies here in the United States. Subsidizing food costs in the form of payments for groceries is the core of our supplemental nutrition assistance program. Insurance premiums paid by our corn and soybean growers are directly subsidized in the farm bill on the floor today. And adverse market payments, what we once called direct payments, are available to crops such as peanuts and rice if the price for those commodities fall below a certain threshold. These government subsidies are used all across our country--from Iowa to North and South Carolina; and from Missouri down through Kansas, Arkansas, and Texas.

Now we have heard from several members from these and other States the many opinions about the validity or usefulness of these subsidies. And I certainly have my own opinion about how the agricultural policy in the United States should be reformed and shaped. However, today, I stand to discuss a unique program--our country's Sugar Program. For those of you who are not familiar with the program, it consists of three components--a domestic allocation component, a tariff quota component, and a loan component. Now, aside from the loan component, uniquely, the Sugar Program in the United States does not require a direct government subsidy. In fact, from 2002 to 2011, the Sugar Program in the United States cost the government zero dollars, a glaringly low amount compared to the various other commodity programs that I previously listed.

There is a reason for this difference. Our Sugar Program is not an agricultural program--it is a trade program. We do not set the price of sugar in the United States artificially high by sending taxpayer money directly to that industry as we do with corn, soybeans, peanuts, or all the other various agricultural commodities here in the United States. We set the price of sugar in the United States by limiting the amount of sugar that we import from foreign countries.

This distinction cannot be ignored. This distinction creates a fundamentally different set of policy decisions for my colleagues here in the Senate as we continue this important debate on our Sugar Program.

Furthermore, this distinction requires acknowledgement in the sense that it changes our discussion about the Sugar Program here in the United States from how it impacts our domestic industries to how it interacts with same industries and policies in the international community. We cannot support any policy that ignores international realities at the detriment of our own domestic industries.

In implementation, and by necessity, this reality means two things: One, in debating the sugar policy here in the United States, because it is inherently a trade policy, we must do so with international realities in mind, and No. 2--when viewed through this lens, does any amendment that would reform this program without consideration of these international realities make the best sense and, more importantly, set a positive precedent?

I would argue it does not and would offer my colleagues, in the context of trade, the following facts: The Brazil Government, through the form of direct payments, forgiven loans and pension payments, and fuel mandates, subsidized the sugar industry in their country to a tune of $2.5 billion last year alone. Brazil controls 50 percent of all the world's sugar exports. To put that into context, Saudi Arabia controls only about 19 percent of the world's oil exports. Countries such as China, Thailand, and India, countries that the United States does not have free-trade agreements with, all subsidize their sugar industries in some form. And even in Mexico, the government owns and operates 20 percent of the country's sugar industry.

These countries, regardless of whether we repeal our sugar program here in the United States, will continue to generously subsidize sugar production for their own countries. In this context, I would ask my colleagues to seriously question the appropriateness, the benefits, and more importantly the risks to American jobs, if reforms to our Sugar Program were to pass without any link to the overall international dialogue. The 142,000 jobs and the $20 billion annually that our domestic industry provides to our economy would be at risk while at no point in our discussion have we accounted for the protectionist policies that exist for the sugar industry in other countries all around the world.

To be clear, I am not arguing that, as a country, we need to be trade protectionists. To the contrary, I think our country will excel in the 21st century only if we eliminate barriers to trade and increase the flow of goods all around the world. But what I am saying is that if we are going to eliminate a trade program, let us do it in the context of a trade debate. Otherwise, we will lose jobs, industries, and overall leverage to other countries without even bringing them to the table to negotiate. I would argue it would be more appropriate to address reform of our Sugar Program in the context of international trade.

Very simply, we should repeal our entire Sugar Program if the largest sugar-producing countries in the world eliminated their own trade protectionist policies as well. We must ensure that we do not negotiate against ourselves in this international context by eliminating a program important to an industry in our country that is unfortunately forced to deal with these international realities. And I encourage my colleagues to consider the precedent they would set for their own industries in their own States when they consider the various amendments offered in this debate introduced to reform our Sugar Program. We must put this debate in the proper context while at the same time acknowledging the benefits of free trade to the United States and to citizens in countries all across the world.

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