Cutting Trujillo Out

In punishing Fidel Castro by canceling the rest of Cuba's 1960 U.S. sugar quota, the U.S. at first seemed in the embarrassing position of giving a windfall to Dominican Republic Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. Under the law, Cuba's canceled quota was to be split among other traditional foreign suppliers to the U.S. Trujillo's normal 111,157-ton share of the U.S. market promised to grow by more than 200%, giving an extra $29 million to the Dominican sugar industry, which Trujillo virtually owns. Last week the U.S. found a way to cancel Trujillo's bonanza.

Under this plan, much of the canceled Cuban allotment went to Mexico (whose share of the U.S. market climbed from 95,000 tons to 345,940 tons) and Brazil (up from no share of the U.S. market to 100,347 tons). Both nations were overjoyed at the prospect but did not want to say so aloud, since many of their workers and peasants still consider Castro a bearded Robin Hood, boldly defying the U.S. Mexico's official rationalization is that Mexico, after all, began asking for an increased sugar quota long before the Cuba-U.S. crisis began.

In London, without objection from the U.S. delegate, the International Sugar Council met last week to rejigger world export quotas in Cuba's favor to make up for the loss of the U.S. market. The council authorized other nations, including Soviet Russia, to increase their purchases by 1.250.000 tons. In effect, the new quotas will keep Cuban sugar exports (and employment of Cuban sugar workers) near normal, though Cuba will still lose the extra $150 million the U.S. previously paid above world prices. The council's fast reshuffling of trade discouraged buyers' hopes that unallotted quotas would depress prices. On the contrary, the world sugar price went up.

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