If the Senate confirms Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as HHS secretary, he has his work cut out for him. His quest to make America healthy again won’t be easy, but it should include tackling Big Sugar, an industry that has substantially increased Americans’ grocery prices — and significantly decreased their health.

In the U.S., sugar costs 40 cents per pound, double the global price of 20 cents. These high prices are the result of Big Sugar’s monopoly on the sugar market, a monopoly that receives vital support from government intervention.

Federal government subsidies for domestic sugar production have existed since the 1980s and consistently contribute to these high sugar prices. Annually, sugar companies receive around $4 billion in increased revenues from subsidies and tariffs. This allows for noncompetitive practices and contributes to a system of cronyism instead of capitalism.

Recently, these subsidies have only increased. In October 2023, the USDA ramped up assistance for sugar-producing states to roughly $600 per gross ton of sugar.

While these subsidies were ostensibly created to stabilize prices, since their creation, domestic sugar costs have largely matched international volatility – and have consistently remained more expensive.

But Big Sugar isn’t content with the government benefits it receives at the cost of consumers. Instead, it works to further entrench its monopoly through government lobbying.

Sugar crops make up less than 2% of the total value of U.S. crops, but sugar lobbying costs more than a third of all U.S. crop lobbying, and sugar PAC donations are more than all other U.S. crops combined.

Much of this can be attributed to the Fanjul sugar oligarchs, who grow cane sugar in the U.S. and the Dominican Republic and line the coffers of both Democrat and Republican politicians in an effort to maintain this destructive system to the benefit of their multibillion-dollar empire. Their vast empire includes Dominos Sugar, Florida Crystals, American Sugar Refining, Tate & Lyle, etc.

And while Big Sugar claims to protect jobs, the artificial price hike caused by the subsidies causes the loss of 17,000 to 20,000 U.S. jobs annually, primarily in the food processing industries. High American sugar costs have led confectionary companies to lay off workers and move their factories offshore.

The food and confectionary manufacturers that stay in the U.S. increasingly opt to use high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a sweetener derived from corn starch, instead of the more expensive cane sugar. Many countries ban HFCS, citing its possible association with obesity, liver disease, pancreatic cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. But because of government-instituted implicit corn subsidies, totaling $116 billion since 1995, HFCS can compete with the similarly-subsidized sugar industry.

For decades, sugar and corn lobbyists have been locked in a subsidy war. Yet while these two industries battle over profit, American health suffers. While the government is more than willing to subsidize corn and sugar, it provides very little subsidy for fruits and vegetables, a fact that contributes to poor American diet and elevated obesity rates.

President Donald Trump has consistently promised to take on special interests and drain the swamp. Perhaps he should start with the sugar and corn lobbies.

RFK Jr. has already identified HFCS as a contributing factor for the epidemic of child obesity in the U.S. and called for the end of corn subsidies. But the government should go a step further and tear down the sugar quota. There are a myriad of alternative producers that could step up, creating jobs, reducing grocery prices, and making American food processing more competitive.

Without Big Sugar’s monopoly, farmland currently devoted to sugar could be shifted to more productive uses. American consumers and businesses would save billions of dollars otherwise eaten up by sugar subsidies and tariffs. The biggest contributors to America’s health crisis would suffer a severe blow.

It’s time for policymakers to stop protecting Big Sugar and start protecting Americans instead.

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Andrew Hale is the Jay Van Andel Senior Trade Policy Analyst at The Heritage Foundation. Paul Joshua Bustamante is a member of Heritage’s Young Leaders Program.

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