Sugar a sticking point for Pacific free trade

September 20th, 2012

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Category: Policy, Sugar

(ABC Online) – The sugar industry wants the Federal Government to consider walking away from trade negotiations if the United States keeps refusing to take more imports.

Australia and the US are involved, with other nations, in talks towards a Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade pact.

But Alf Cristaudo, of the Australian Sugar Alliance, says it’s very frustrating that the US is looking to protect its subsidised industry and single out sugar for exclusion.

He says it’s now up to the Federal Government to determine if sugar is going to be a deal breaker.

“We’ve got to take a stance at some point that, if we are going to tout these arrangements as being something novel and promoting freer trade between these Trans-Pacific countries, then you can’t go excluding specific commodities from them,” he said.

“What we are looking for is additional access into the US over and above our existing quota given that we couldn’t get under the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement.

“It’s a simple fact that the United States doesn’t produce anywhere near enough sugar for its internal domestic consumption and any extra sugar that would be going into the US from Australia is not going to have an impact on domestic producers.”

Mr Cristaudo says Mexico has had unfettered access to the US market for its sugar under the North American Free Trade Agreement for a few years and prices for domestic producers have not been affected, despite an increase in imports.

“We can’t see anything even under the current arrangements that should preclude Australia being able to get increased access into that US domestic market.”

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