Why MAGA wants to make Mexican Coke in the US

Coca-Cola is launching a new product in the US this fall featuring cane sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup, and at least one restaurant chain is planning to offer sugar Coke as soon as next week.

- Matthew Yglesias, Tribune News Service

This news prompted Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to post his reaction online: “MAHA is winning.” This new Coke is highly unlikely to Make America Healthy Again. But it raises the question of how US soda manufacturers came to rely so heavily on the corn-based sweetener in the first place. The answer is protectionism, one of the main items on the Make America Great Again agenda. As it turns out, when you combine MAHA and MAGA, what you get is ... Mexican Coke.

Because sugar-based Coca-Cola is already available in the US—it’s just imported from Mexico and known colloquially as “Mexican Coke.” The company does that because the US has extensive trade protections for American sugar growers, which pushes the domestic price of sugar in the US far above the world level. That means that it makes more economic sense to use corn-based sweeteners in US-based soda production while importing sugar soda from Mexico.