Trumps Misplaced Oreo Rage – -Uncle Sugar Made Them Do It

Presidential front-runner Donald Trump vows that he will ‘never eat another Oreo again’ to protest the transfer of 600 cookie-making jobs from Chicago to Mexico. And Trump is 100% correct when he condemns the factory’s exodus: ‘It’s unfair to us.’
But the villains who have destroyed the jobs of American workers are Congress and the Department of Agriculture, not Nabisco and free trade. It is the very protectionist policies The Donald advocates to help American industry ‘win’ again that caused the Oreo job losses he decries. Federal policy has long kept the U. S. price of sugar at double or triple that found in the world market. Food manufacturers such as Nabisco are hostage to a Byzantine combination of price supports and arbitrary import restrictions that make producing candy and other sweets far more expensive here than in Canada or Mexico.

This post was published at David Stockmans Contra Corner on April 5, 2016.