Last week, President Biden announced a new campaign to strengthen America’s supply chains. This initiative includes a newly formed White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience and $196 million in USDA investments to strengthen domestic food supply chains. 

In a letter to President Biden, the Alliance for Fair Sugar Policy applauded the president’s actions in prioritizing this issue and encouraged his administration to further these efforts by modernizing the U.S.'s outdated sugar policy. The U.S. sugar program restricts domestic supply of sugar and artificially raises food prices for consumers. By implementing modest reforms to this program, the Biden administration could alleviate supply chain disruptions and lower food costs for millions of Americans. 

"The Alliance for Fair Sugar Policy (AFSP) applauds the creation of the White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience, and we are encouraged by your administration’s continued attention to the challenges impeding the efficient flow of goods, particularly in the agricultural and food manufacturing sectors," says Grant Colvin, executive director, Alliance for Fair Sugar Policy, in the letter.

"Even as extraordinary federal investments have been made toward resolving supply chain disruptions since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, AFSP urges your administration, the newly announced Council, and Congress to address the significant and recurring issues that continue to hamper the food manufacturing supply chain resulting from America’s outdated sugar policy. Remarkably, the U.S. sugar program has not been meaningfully reformed in almost 90 years. The severe supply restrictions at the center of the program are out of step with America’s dynamic farm and food economy and have needlessly pushed up food prices for hardworking families, eliminated thousands of American manufacturing jobs, and forced numerous companies to move their operations abroad," he notes.

Read the full letter here.