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SUA: A Voice for Market-Oriented Reform
The Sweetener Users Association represents companies who utilize nutritive sweeteners in their business operations, as well as trade associations to which these companies belong. SUA seeks to
- Support policies that will improve the business conditions of industrial sweetener users;
- Represent its members' interests, principally in regulatory and technical matters pertaining to nutritive sweeteners; and
- Carry out informational and educational activities on issues that may affect the sweetener industry.
SUA endeavors to make U.S. sugar policy more market-oriented, both domestically and internationally. On the domestic front, SUA works closely with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, encouraging marketing allotments to be established at levels that do not artificially restrict supplies available to meet commercial demand. SUA is also an advocate for sugar re-export programs, working to promote regulatory changes that make these important programs operate consistently with normal business practices, while discouraging proposed changes in the programs that would have hurt trade with Mexico and other nations.
Internationally, SUA has supported the movement toward less trade-distorting policies, both multilaterally in the World Trade Organization and bilaterally in individual trade pacts like the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). SUA worked with other agricultural and industrial groups to successfully urge the inclusion of sugar in CAFTA, securing an initial additional quantity of 109,000 metric tons.
SUA supports the inclusion of sugar in all trade agreements because
- Additional sources of supply encourage more competitive conditions in the U.S. sugar market;
- Excluding sugar would permit other countries also to exclude trade-sensitive commodities, including those commodities that the U.S. farm and food sector can export competitively; and
- Sugar exports generate foreign exchange for our trading partners, which can then be used to buy more American food products.
For these reasons, SUA will be fully engaged in working for competitive trade policies, building alliances with U.S. farm groups, food companies and non-agricultural firms, to promote comprehensive agreements that include sugar. SUA will seek to have a positive influence on FTAs involving Panama; the Andean nations; Thailand; and the Southern Africa Customs Union. SUA will also focus on the Doha Development Round of the World Trade Organization. Finally, the organization will endeavor to influence the outcome of bilateral issues such as the longstanding dispute with Mexico over sweetener market access.
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