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Essay on Big Tobacco's Unduly Influence on the Department of Agriculture
The United States is now home to two of the world's three largest multinational cigarette companies and is the world's largest exporter of cigarettes. (Economic Research Service 1997). U.S. cigarette exports fell 11 percent in 1997, "due to greater offshore production by U.S. manufacturers," says the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). (Economic Research Service, 1997.) In 1986, the U.S. government threatened trade sanctions against Japan if it did not open up its market to cigarettes. Senator Jesse Helms, the powerful North Carolina Republican and then chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, wrote to Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone in July 1986 urging him to comply with U.S. demands: "Your friends in Congress will have a better chance to stem the tide of anti-Japanese trade sentiment if and when they can cite tangible examples of your doors being opened to American products," Helms wrote. "I urge that you make a commitment to establish a timetable for allowing US cigarettes a specific share of your market. May I suggest a goal of 20 percent within the next 18 months?" 3 Months later, Japan complied.
During the recent U.S. Congressional debate on tobacco legislation, the cigarette companies often invoked the plight of the American tobacco farmer to argue against increased taxes and other tobacco control measures. However this concern has always taken a back seat to higher profits. Over the past decade, Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds and BAT have been using use more and more foreign-grown tobacco in both their U.S. and foreign factories. By 1993, these companies were importing more than 1 billion pounds of tobacco into the United States, up from 413 million pounds three years earlier -- between 1995 and 1996, these imports rose an additional 21 percent.
Tobacco as an agricultural commodity has a long history in the state of Wisconsin.......
