Kirk Vashaw, CEO of the Spangler Candy Company, employs more than 500 workers at his company’s Bryan, Ohio, production facility. He says he’d like to hire more, and with 900 applicants for jobs last year there is no shortage of interest. But Vashaw says that the federal government’s meddling prevents the math from working out.

To bring them on, Vashaw asks but one simple thing of Washington policymakers: “Let us buy sugar on the free market.”