President Trump has ushered in a new era of American exceptionalism. The government has untethered American manufacturing from burdensome regulations and streamlined the tax code to foster innovation.
As part of this broader shift, President Trump and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer have held foreign governments accountable for the unfair trade practices that have put American manufacturing and agriculture at a profound disadvantage. President Trump saw shuttered factories, bankrupt farms, and strategic industries handed over to foreign nations and said: no more.
It truly is the Golden Age for American manufacturing. Essential industries are coming back to American soil. Investments in semiconductor production, pharmaceutical development, vehicle manufacturing, and more are happening across the country.
The cornerstone of this effort has been President Trump's strategic deployment of tariffs.
President Trump once said that "tariff" is the "most beautiful word in the dictionary." And with Ambassador Greer at the helm of trade policy, the administration has utilized tariffs to implement what Ambassador Greer calls "a trade policy that accelerates re-industrialization." This approach reflects his commitment to putting American workers and farmers first—not multinational corporations that "may not care where they make their money or products," as he wrote in December.
One essential American industry that needs this same commitment and resolve is sugar.
Sugar is an essential food ingredient and strategically important for our nation's food security. America is one of the largest sugar importers in the world. Yet the tariff structure designed to defend the U.S. sugar market against over-quota foreign sugar has not been meaningfully updated since 2000. Over-quota foreign sugar, propped up by subsidies and predatory trade practices, continues to flood our market, giving overseas mega-producers an unfair advantage over 11,000 American sugar beet and sugarcane farmers just trying to survive.
The results have been catastrophic. Both beet and cane sugar facilities have been forced to close. American sugar producers have suffered $3 billion in losses in just the past two years alone. Rural communities have watched manufacturing jobs leave and vital economic opportunities disappear.
If American sugar production were driven out of business, food manufacturers and households would be forced to get their sugar solely from unreliable foreign countries. Those countries do not produce sugar to the same high standards as American farmers and workers. Sometimes foreign countries even ban sugar exports in order to have more sugar for their own markets.
The good news is that this is exactly the kind of problem America First trade policy was designed to solve.
In announcing USTR's recent Section 301 investigations, Ambassador Greer stated that the U.S. "will no longer sacrifice its industrial base to other countries" and that the investigations underscored "President Trump's commitment to reshore critical supply chains."
There is nothing more critical than being able to feed ourselves. Updating sugar tariffs would protect our family farms and send an unmistakable signal: America will not allow subsidized foreign producers to destroy a domestic industry that supports farmers, workers, manufacturers, and rural communities and reliable supply chains across the country for consumers.
There is strong bipartisan support for action. Senator John Hoeven, a Republican from North Dakota, has urged the Trump administration to update the over-quota sugar tariff. Senator Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat from Michigan, called sugar tariffs "smart" and "strategic." Sens. Hoeven and Slotkin, along with Republican Rep. Julie Fedorchak (ND-AL) and Democrat Rep. Troy Carter (LA-2), recently led a bipartisan, bicameral letter to USTR, with 112 members of Congress, urging the Trump administration to use Section 301 authorities to address this issue.
Remember, there's no such thing as "free" trade—America's maintaining the world order is very expensive, and it is OK to ask the world to pay for it. President Trump has made economic independence a central pillar of national strength, and Ambassador Greer deserves real credit for carrying that mission forward by championing trade enforcement, putting American producers first, and insisting on fairness in the global marketplace.
Now that same commitment should be brought to bear for homegrown sugar. We cannot afford to offshore American food production.
An America First trade enforcement agenda must include America's food supply. And it must include the men and women who grow, harvest, process, refine, and deliver the sugar our country depends on every day.