Hallelujah, the Everglades are to be saved. The Biden administration is to spend vast sums on sorting out that tender and delicate environment once and for all. But don’t get too excited.
For one thing, the administration is not about to kill off the government actions that actually ruin the Everglades in the first place. One thing ruining this delicate environment is the use of the land and water to grow sugar cane. We would not do this at all were it not for government and politics. It’s vastly cheaper to grow sugar elsewhere and boat it in. Instead, we have tariffs and quotas and trade restrictions to increase the price inside America. Sometimes this means that Americans have to pay double the average world price for sugar.
Why is this so?
Well, the owners of much of the American sugar industry, and near all the cane part of it, are the Fanjuls. They donate prodigiously to those who dominate policy concerning sugar-based trade restrictions. This is not party political: One brother favors the Democratic side of the aisle, another the Republican side, in order to spread the bets around. “Big Sugar’s” power over the politics of sugar also explains why the last major attempt to deal with the problem, back around 2000, failed. Truly sorting out the Everglades demands no more sugar cane using the land and the water.
The sensible solution would be for the United States to stop providing trade protection for domestically produced sugar. That would then mean we don’t have to buy out plantations and provide compensation for not killing the environment. The polluters simply go bust. Problem solved.
Unfortunately, this isn’t what Biden’s new plan offers. Not at all. Instead, new bureaucracy is arriving. We are just piling complexity upon the first error. It’s entirely possible to agree with progressives that the government does have the power to solve problems to all our benefit. But we need to be serious about the solutions. Want to save the Everglades? Then allow for free trade in sugar.
It’s not a complete solution, but this reform would deal with most of the problem.
Tim Worstall (@worstall) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute. You can read all his pieces at the Continental Telegraph.
