by James Bovard at Economic Policy Journal
David Stockman’s Contra Corner
Presidential front-runner Donald Trump vows that he will “never eat another Oreo again” to protest the transfer of 600 cookie-making jobs from Chicago to Mexico. And Trump is 100% correct when he condemns the factory’s exodus: “It’s unfair to us.”
But the villains who have destroyed the jobs of American workers are Congress and the Department of Agriculture, not Nabisco and free trade. It is the very protectionist policies The Donald advocates to help American industry “win” again that caused the Oreo job losses he decries. Federal policy has long kept the U.S. price of sugar at double or triple that found in the world market.