WASH­ING­TON–A ma­jor think tank here has ac­cused the Unit­ed States of hypocrisy in its sug­ar pol­i­cy to­wards the Caribbean.The Coun­cil on Hemi­spher­ic Af­fairs (CO­HA) said while Wash­ing­ton push­es eco­nom­ic open­ness for oth­er na­tions, in­clud­ing the Caribbean, it "ac­tive­ly em­ploys pro­tec­tion­ist poli­cies when it comes to its own close­ly-held econ­o­my," stat­ing that this is "es­pe­cial­ly true with sug­ar."

CO­HA notes that the US gov­ern­ment "heav­i­ly sub­sidis­es its sug­ar sec­tor, im­pos­es quo­tas on sug­ar im­ports, and then hec­tors de­vel­op­ing coun­tries on the wis­dom of cut­ting back on their own sub­si­dies."Ac­cord­ing to CO­HA these mea­sures pro­tect pri­vate US sug­ar pro­duc­ers from for­eign com­pe­ti­tion, al­low­ing them to seek "un­rea­son­ably high prices" in the US mar­ket.

"US con­sumers are like­ly to lose from these poli­cies, as they end up pay­ing high­er prices at US su­per­mar­kets, and, more­over, Caribbean sug­ar prices al­so have been ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by US pro­tec­tion­ism in the sug­ar in­dus­try."

CMC