According to a recent statement from the American Sugar Alliance:

Over the past few weeks, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has released three key data points that deserve attention on Capitol Hill and are sure to deflate the Big Candy lobby’s attempt to gut U.S. sugar policy and outsource America’s domestic production.

But in fact, the new data points suggest that it’s time for sugar industry lobbyists to start telling the full truth about sugar prices.

For example, according to the Sugar Alliance:

The raw sugar price that many sugar farmers receive fell to 21 cents per pound, and the wholesale refined price that candy makers pay dipped to 30.5 cents.

That’s only half of the story.

According to the USDA, the average world raw sugar price in January was 18.37 cents per pound. The U.S. raw sugar price was 21.2 cents per pound. In other words, Americans paid a 15.4 percent surcharge for raw sugar in order to support higher profits for U.S. sugar producers.

According to the Sugar Alliance:

Multinational food companies are profit hungry, and they are willing to spend millions on lobbying to squeeze out even a couple extra pennies a pound.

True, multinational food companies are profit hungry. So are sugar producers. The difference is that food companies profit by competing for consumers’ dollars. Sugar producers profit by getting special favors from the government. This may explain why, although sugar accounts for just 1.9 percent of U.S. crop production, over half of all political action committee (PAC) donations from crop producers come from sugar growers.