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Show SUGAR DUTY MAINTAINED i While the priee3 of most food products have been rising during the ; p:t few mo'Jths sugar remains a notable exception. Wholesale quotations I on both refined and raw sugar are. more than two cents a pound lower than a year ago. Under theso conditions, says Facts About Sugar", the geners public has lost interest in the attempt tfeing made by those intarested in Cuban Mtgar production to bring about a'reduction in the import duty, but this very decline in prices has had the effect of intensifying the interest of beet growing farmers in western states who are paid for their crop in proportion to the, market price of sugar and wuio assert that a further reduction re-duction in their 'net returns will make it impossible for them to grow sugar beets in competition with other farm crops. Various farmers' organizations, including the American Farm Bureau Federation and the International Farm Congress, have adopted resolutions resolu-tions recently urging that no reduction be made in the duty on sugar which they point to as one of the few items in the tariff schedule that is of direct benefit to the farmers of the United States. They accuse those who have been agitating for a reduction in the import of inconsistency.' in claiming on the one hand that a reduction in the tariff on sugar wrill lower its cost to the consumer while admitting on the other hand it is tho competition of the larger crops grown in the United States during the past season that has been the main factor in the recent decline in prices. They quote from a market review by an association of eastern refiners refin-ers i.-nd Cuban producers as" recently as July IS which referred to the pressure pres-sure from American grown sugar as being the cause of the continued decline de-cline in market prices to show that consumers ara receiving the benefit of a reduction within the past year amounting to more than the entire tariff on Cuban Sugar which is 1.7 G cents a pound. Their argument is that to give the importers of sugar a further advantage over domestic producers by lowering the present tariff rate would reduce the competition competi-tion which now exists by cutting dowrn American production and so would injure consumers rather than benefit them. Representatives of farming interests particularly object to the course of the Tariff Commission in its recent investigation of the relative costs of producing sugar in the United States and Cuba because they assert that tlie Commission has based its inquiry upon comparison of manuf ncturng costs instead of upon agricultural costs which they contend is the real measure of the ability of the domestic and foreign industries to compete on equal terms and they are preparing to ask President Coolidge to re- turn the report to the Commission with instructions to study this phase of the subject in case the Commission recommends at rate of duty which wii'l endanger the ability of American farmers to continue their production in competition with the: impoted product. They say that the tariff law authorizes the President to charge the duty on any imported commodity only when a change has taken plare in the relative cost of production at home and abroad and that no such change has occurred in the cost of growing sugar since the present law was enacted in Sept. 19 22. |