Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pressing soft drink manufacturers to shift away from high fructose corn syrup in producing their products. Though the movement away for corn syrup is a cornerstone of the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative, the Department of Health and Human Services has so far limited itself to making recommendations to food producers.
But when a presidential administration makes a suggestion, even multinational corporations have to take it seriously. Coca-Cola has announced plans to make The Real Thing using cane sugar. That production shift puts Coke in a precarious position with Trump tariff policies while working at cross-purpose to longstanding federal subsidies and other support for corn farmers.
The secretary’s zeal to Make America Healthy Again is understandable. Americans are seriously overweight and getting fatter over time. About four in ten Americans are considered obese (with a body mass index above 30) by the Centers for Disease control, and although we saw a slight drop in B.M.I. in 2023 and 2024, the rate of obesity in the United States tripled between 1975 and 2016. Excessive body fat is closely linked to incidences of diabetes, many forms of cancer, and other serious health problems.
But the Coke experience reveals some fault lines in the Trump administration’s elaborate policy goals. The U.S. sugar market can only provide 30% of Coca-Cola’s projected demand, the company noted in a recent statement. The countries capable of filling that gap include many whose trade relations with the United States are fragile or deteriorating. Tariffs on Mexico would result in 25% increase in price of sugar, while Brazilian imports would double that to a 50% increase.
If the company follows through on its promise to make products with cane sugar (a change that would also satisfy a boutique market of cola snobs who today seek out Mexican-made Coca-Cola in classic glass bottles), its production cost will increase, probably by a double-digit percentage. Will Coke be able to pass on some or all of that price hike to consumers? There might be a public health argument that inflating the cost of an unhealthy product will reduce demand for it, but it is more likely that consumers will just move to cheaper (and frequently even less healthy) products. And soft drinks are just one part of America’s obesity problem. Consumers make better choices when markets operate freely. Implementing bureaucratic control disrupts the market, price-shocking consumers and hamstringing manufacturers.
It’s also worth asking how high-fructose corn syrup ended up being the default sweetener for America’s soft drinks. Decades of federal largesse for midwestern corn producers have severely distorted agricultural markets. The 1981 Farm Bill established a precedent for subsidies and preferential treatment for farms across the United States. This law also included government price targets on cotton, feed grain, wool, and rice. When market prices shifted downward, it was federal taxpayers who picked up the slack. As the government continued to pay the surplus, farms continued production even when the market was not responding.
A 1985 update attempted to veer in the other direction by reducing and freezing target prices on corn, wheat, cotton and rice, but federal manipulation aimed at the corn belt continues to this day. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, the Coronavirus Food Assistance Programs (CFAP 1 and 2) allocated substantial funds to agriculture, including $6.8 billion in taxpayer money for corn farmers. The subsidies continued after the lockdowns ended, with $3.2 billion in taxpayer funds distributed to farms in 2024 alone. As the government continues to pick winners and losers, the pain is being felt by poultry farmers and farmers who supply corn for ethanol production, along with sheep and lamb farmers. Although these industries were facing the same pandemic-related struggles, the government picked them as the economic losers.
But confusingly, the subsidy-supported farms are now being targeted by government policies. MAHA’s new focus on promoting sugar-based pop aims to steer production and consumption through policy, adding another layer of government oversight and further complicating the landscape for producers.
Tariffs on imported goods are making things worse. These duties are intended to protect local industries and encourage domestic production. In reality, they disrupt trade flows, reduce supply options, and inflate prices for both businesses and consumers. U.S. manufacturers face higher input costs not because of scarcity or market failure, but because of these imposed trade barriers. These policies cut off global markets and let less competitive industries survive without improving, while punishing companies that have managed to thrive in a free market.
Whether the goal is to help farmers or to make a healthy country, government initiatives inevitably handpick products at the taxpayers’ expense. As the MAHA campaign shifts from educating the public about risks and options to using federal power to control market outcomes, we are already seeing economic winners chosen on the basis of political power rather than consumer demand. Government intervention in the food industry takes power away from the people and uses taxpayer funds to do so.
Producers should be free to compete based on demand, rather than bowing to a centralized planner in Washington. Altering supply and demand to fit regulatory preferences does nothing to inform the public and only limits our choices. Americans should be free to make choices about their own money, diet and health.
