Lawrence Graham argues, in a letter in today’s Wall Street Journal, that the quota that Uncle Sam imposes on sugar imports should be raised. Mr. Graham isn’t quite correct: that quota should be abolished.
The ‘correct’ amount of sugar for Americans to import can be, and should be, determined only by American consumers’ willingness to buy such imports. The fact that U.S. sugar growers insist that there is plenty enough sugar available under the existing quota is economically and ethically preposterous – as preposterous as would be, say, the insistence of newspaper publishers pleading with government to restrict the amount of news that consumers can buy annually from competing media on grounds that consumers already get plenty enough news from newspapers.
