Of course, if the U.S. sugar market were open
to unrestricted imports, the artificially high
domestic price would attract lower-priced
imported sugar, driving down the domestic price
and forcing the government to acquire huge
amounts of sugar as processors decided to forfeit
their sugar to the U.S. Department of
Agriculture. To avoid that scenario, the U.S. government
intervenes in the market a second time:
through a system of tariff-rate quotas (TRQ).