Trump’s cane sugar Coca-Cola push could disrupt U.S. agriculture: trade group

Trump on Wednesday announced efforts to push Coca-Cola to switch to cane sugar for its U.S.-made products, a departure from the abundant and inexpensive corn syrup currently used in most of its products.

“I have been speaking to @CocaCola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so,” Trump wrote on social media. “I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them — You’ll see. It’s just better!”

In response, Coca-Cola said it would have “more details on new innovative offerings” soon but did not confirm the switch to cane sugar for U.S. products. The company made an additional statement on Thursday defending its use of high-fructose corn syrup, which it said “has about the same number of calories per serving as table sugar and is metabolized in a similar way by your body.” Coca-Cola declined to comment further.

But the possibility of a shift in sweeteners has left a bad taste in the mouths of corn industry leaders, such as the Corn Refiners Association, a trade group, who fears the sugar swap could put some farmers of the U.S.’s largest crop at a disadvantage.

“Replacing high-fructose corn syrup with cane sugar doesn’t make sense. President Trump stands for American manufacturing jobs, American farmers, and reducing the trade deficit,” Corn Refiners Association CEO John Bode said in a statement on Wednesday. “Replacing high fructose corn syrup with cane sugar would cost thousands of American food manufacturing jobs, depress farm income, and boost imports of foreign sugar, all with no nutritional benefit.”

Factoring in Trump’s tariffs

Changes in demand for corn syrup, such as that used in Coke, would increase demand for cane sugar in Louisiana and Florida, as well as from Central and South America, where the sweetener is heavily tariffed. It could force corn farmers—primarily in Iowa and Illinois—to look for business elsewhere, Brandon McFadden, a professor of food policy economics at the University of Arkansas’ Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences, told Fortune. 

The most obvious solution for corn farmers would be to export their crops. But while corn exports have hit record highs this year, Trump’s trade policy with China has completely inhibited the export of corn from the U.S. to the nation, which has previously been a major boon to the U.S. corn industry.

“The exports were looking really good, but they would look even better if we were still supplying China so heavily,” McFadden said.

Other industry experts said these short-term effects are being overstated. Corn syrup production in the U.S. accounts for 410 million bushels of the country’s 15.5 billion bushels of corn, making up less than 3% of the total industry’s total, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Center. With Coca-Cola’s use of high-fructose corn syrup representing a fraction of that fraction, the company making the switch to cane sugar wouldn’t have an outsized impact on the industry as a whole, according to Scott Irvin, the Laurence J. Norton Chair of Agricultural Marketing at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

“For Coca-Cola to remove it completely would be a pretty small blip in the corn market,” he told Fortune.

Fear of a growing ‘MAHA’ movement

But Trump’s cane sugar push could still have sizable consequences for the corn industry, Irwin said. The change would have a meaningful impact for U.S. food processing giants such as Archer-Daniels-Midland, which produces high-fructose corn syrup. The manufacturer’s stock dropped 6% in pre-market trading on Thursday following Trump’s announcement, though later mostly recovered.

The largest impact of the proposed switch, however, is the symbolic impact of the growing influence of Department of Human Health and Safety Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s controversial “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) campaign, Irwin said. Kennedy has repeatedly targeted ultraprocessed foods, including corn syrup, favoring alternatives like cane sugar, despite some nutrition experts asserting the two sugars are essentially chemically identical.

“This is exactly the kind of MAHA move that U.S. [agriculture] fears,” Irwin told Fortune. “There’s clearly a growing consumer backlash captured by the MAHA movement against food additives, chemicals being added, diabetes, obesity—throw it all together.”

As major U.S. food makers acquiesce to pressure from the Trump administration by adding more explicit packaging labels and vowing to remove dyes and seed oils from their products, there’s real concern from the corn industry the administration could outright ban corn syrup, which would have “a real price impact” on the market, according to Irwin.

HHS and the White House did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

Trump’s agricultural Catch-22

However, the seemingly unstoppable force of the Trump administration’s MAHA push may meet the immovable object of decades-old, powerful lobbying barriers from U.S. agriculture, putting a damper on the prospect of cane-sugar Coke in the U.S.

In the 1970s, the U.S. protected sugar producers, particularly beet sugar, building on an 18th-century tradition of piling tariffs on sugar imports to insulate the industry. But as the cost of beet and cane sugar increased in the U.S. and decreased globally, U.S. food processors manufactured corn syrup as a cheap alternative. Corn farming is bolstered by subsidies by the U.S. government, and the powerful corn lobby has continued to oppose changes to the U.S. sugar program limiting imports on sugar, ultimately keeping corn syrup on top.

Therefore, according to Irwin, the more effective way to eliminate high-fructose corn syrup would be to weaken the industry by rationalizing U.S. sugar policy.

“An economist’s answer is: Let’s level the playing field by eliminating the high-priced approach from domestically produced sugar,” he said.

Not only is the sugar lobby likely too powerful to be dislodged—but because the Trump administration relies on its large support base of American farmers—it backs policies often friendly to U.S. agriculture. When corn trade groups speak out against threats to high-fructose corn syrup, it puts Trump in a Catch-22.

“It’s just going to be trying to walk that tightrope throughout this administration,” Irwin said.