How US Sugar Policies Just Helped America Lose 600 Jobs

How US Sugar Policies Just Helped America Lose 600 Jobs
The manufacturer of Oreo cookies recently announced plans to move production of Oreos from Chicago to Mexico, resulting in a loss of 600 U.S. jobs.
This should be a wake-up call to defenders of the U.S. sugar program and other job-destroying trade barriers.
The leading ingredient in Oreos is sugar, and U.S. trade barriers currently require Americans to pay twice the average world prices for sugar.
Sugar-using industries now have a big incentive to relocate from the United States to countries where access to their primary ingredient is not restricted.
According to a 2006 report from the government’s International Trade Administration:
“Chicago, one of the largest U.S. cities for confectionery manufacturing, has lost nearly one-third of its SCP manufacturing jobs over the last 13 years... 
...That lesson appears to be lost on unions that are supposed to represent the workers losing their jobs in Chicago.
For example, The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union consistently has opposed free trade agreements with sugar-producing countries like Australia, Brazil, and Mexico—the kind of trade deals that just might protect their members’ jobs.
So that’s how the cookie crumbles."